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https://www.vcsift.com

Infrastructure

· 17 checks — DNS, redirects, IPv6, crawlability, URL variants, and domain intelligence rolled into one auditable list.
SCORE
88
GRADE
B
FIX
1
REVIEW
8
PASS
8
INFO
0
Probed from Madrid, Spain
200 OK
Checks
17
8 PASS 8 REVIEW 1 FIX
D
CDN & Delivery
Action
No CDN (document or assets)
FIX
No CDN (document or assets)
Warning::
No CDN (document or assets)
Neither the HTML document nor the page's subresources are served through an edge network. A CDN can significantly improve load times for users around the world by caching content at edge nodes closer to them.
No CDN (document or assets)

Consider using a CDN to improve global delivery speed and reduce origin load.

B
DNSSEC
Unsigned (DNSSEC not deployed)
REVIEW
Unsigned (DNSSEC not deployed)
Info::
DNSSEC is not deployed
The zone is not DNSSEC-signed. Users on validating resolvers (Cloudflare 1.1.1.1, Quad9 9.9.9.9, growing default in mobile resolvers) get no protection against DNS spoofing for this domain. Most registrars now offer DNSSEC at a single click; consider enabling it for sites where authenticity matters (banking, healthcare, government).
B
CAA Records
No CAA records (any CA may issue certificates)
REVIEW
No CAA records (any CA may issue certificates)
Info::
No CAA records published
Without CAA records, any publicly-trusted CA can issue certificates for this domain. Adding a CAA record (`yourdomain. IN CAA 0 issue "letsencrypt.org"`) restricts issuance to CAs you authorize. Required by CAB Forum baseline since 2017; the default of 'any CA' is widely supported but is the broader attack surface for issuance fraud.
B
Reverse DNS
0/1 IPs match cert SAN
REVIEW
0/1 IPs match cert SAN
Info::
PTR for 178.156.198.24 does not match any cert SAN: static.24.198.156.178.clients.your-server.de
Common when behind a CDN or shared hosting (PTR points at the provider's hostname). Mismatch can also affect mail deliverability if this IP sends email -- many MTAs reject mail when forward+reverse DNS disagree.
C
IPv6 Readiness
Action
No IPv6 support
REVIEW
No IPv6 support
Info::
No IPv6 (AAAA) records found
IPv6 support is increasingly important for global accessibility. About 40% of internet users have IPv6 connectivity.
No IPv6 Support
About 40% of internet users have IPv6. Consider adding AAAA records.

IPv6 support is increasingly important for global accessibility. About 40% of internet users have IPv6 connectivity.

Why this matters

No AAAA records — same impact as 'no IPv6 (AAAA) records'; IPv6-preferring clients pay extra latency falling back to IPv4.

Source: Google IPv6 stats

B
TLS Certificate Expiry & Recommendations
75 days until leaf cert expires — 3 issues to address
REVIEW

Certificate validity

75
days left
0d 30d 60d 90d+

Recommended actions

  • Enable HSTS: Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains
  • Enable DNSSEC on your domain for DNS spoofing protection
  • Enable OCSP stapling on your TLS server to remove a CA roundtrip and protect user privacy
B
CDN Cache Observability
No CDN cache-status headers in the response
REVIEW
No CDN cache-status headers in the response
Info::
No CDN cache-status headers in the response
Without an X-Cache / CF-Cache-Status / X-Vercel-Cache / Age header, you can't tell from outside whether a request hit the cache or went to origin. Operationally important: enables debugging stale-content reports and verifying cache rules. Most managed CDN platforms emit at least one of these by default; absence often means the platform's diagnostic headers are stripped at an upstream proxy.
B
Operational Status Page
No status page link detected
REVIEW
No status page link detected
Info::
No operational status page link detected
Status pages communicate planned maintenance and incidents to users -- a hallmark of operationally-mature services. Most SaaS teams publish one via Atlassian Statuspage, Instatus, BetterUptime, or a self-hosted Cachet. Smaller sites legitimately don't need one; flagged as Info, not a failure.
B
Health Check Endpoint
No conventional health endpoint found
REVIEW
No conventional health endpoint found
Info::
No conventional health endpoint found
Health endpoints (/health, /healthz, /status, /ping, /api/health) let uptime monitors, load balancers, and orchestration systems (Kubernetes, ECS, Fly.io) verify the service is alive. Marketing sites and small services often skip them legitimately; flagged as Info, not a failure. Probe results: /api/health: 404, /health: 404, /healthz: 404, /ping: 404, /status: 404.
A
DNS Records
1 A records, 35 ms lookup
PASS
1 A records, 35 ms lookup
Info::
Resolves to 1 IPv4 address(es)
Got: 178.156.198.24
Info::
Single A record — no DNS redundancy
Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.
Info::
No IPv6 (AAAA) records
Info::
No NS records found
Info::
No MX records — email not configured via DNS
Info::
No SPF record found in TXT records
SPF helps prevent email spoofing. Add a TXT record starting with 'v=spf1'.
Info::
DNS resolution time: 35 ms
Got: 35 ms
A178.156.198.24
AAAA—
CNAME—
NS—
MX—
TXT—
CAALookup not available with standard resolver
Resolved in 35 ms

Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.

Why this matters

Single A record means a single point of failure — if that IP goes down, your site is unreachable until DNS TTL expires.

Learn more ▾

Add multiple A records for round-robin failover, or use a managed DNS provider with health-checked failover (Route 53, Cloudflare, NS1). Short TTL (60-300s) lets clients recover faster on outages.

Source: SRE practice / DNS architecture

SPF helps prevent email spoofing. Add a TXT record starting with 'v=spf1'.

Why this matters

Without SPF, receiving servers can't validate sending IPs — your domain is easier to spoof in phishing.

Learn more ▾

SPF complements DMARC. Both should be published. SPF records list authorized sending IPs (e.g., `v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all` for Google Workspace). After publishing, verify in Google Postmaster Tools or mxtoolbox.

Source: RFC 7208 (SPF)

A+
Subdomain Takeover
No subdomain takeover risk detected
PASS
No subdomain takeover risk detected
Info::
No CNAME record present
A+
Multi-Resolver DNS Speed
Mean 17ms across 3 resolvers (spread 26ms)
PASS
Mean 17ms across 3 resolvers (spread 26ms)
Info::
Quad9: 0ms
Got: 0ms via 9.9.9.9:53
Info::
Cloudflare: 25ms
Got: 25ms via 1.1.1.1:53
Info::
Google: 26ms
Got: 26ms via 8.8.8.8:53
A+
Redirect Chain
No redirects — direct access
PASS
No redirects — direct access
Info::
No redirects — direct access
Got: https://www.vcsift.com

https://www.vcsift.com

323 ms · HTTP/1.1 FINAL

#URLStatusTimeProtocolServer
1https://www.vcsift.com200323 msHTTP/1.1Apache/2.4.66 (Debian)
A+
Crawlability
robots.txt present, sitemap with 10 URLs
PASS
robots.txt present, sitemap with 10 URLs
Info::
robots.txt is present
Got: 1783 bytes
Info::
sitemap.xml is present
Info::
sitemap.xml is valid XML
Info::
sitemap.xml contains 10 entries
Info::
Sitemap index with 10 child sitemaps
Info::
robots.txt references sitemap
robots.txt 200 OK
Size 1783 B Sitemaps referenced 1 User-agents anthropic-ai, meta-externalagent, Claude-SearchBot, DataForSeoBot, PetalBot, ZoominfoBot, GPTBot, *, Perplexity-User, Google-Extended, AhrefsBot, MJ12bot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Bytespider, DotBot, Amazonbot, CCBot, SemrushBot, BLEXBot, serpstatbot, AspiegelBot, ClaudeBot Blocking No — crawling allowed
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php


# AI bot policy v1 (carbonapps mu-plugin, 2026-06-01)
# Search-time bots — explicit allow for AI citation surface.
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

# Google-Extended — controls Gemini training + Google AI Overview citation eligibility.
# Explicit allow added 2026-06-08 to maximize AEO citation surface.
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

# Non-compliant scraper (Bytespider ignores robots.txt ~90% of the time per public research).
User-agent: Bytespider
Disallow: /

# SEO-tool crawlers v2 (2026-06-12): blocked or throttled for server load.
# Measured ~2,500 req/hr portfolio-wide from these bots — DB/PHP churn, zero ranking value.
# AhrefsBot throttled (not blocked) so our own Ahrefs monitoring keeps working.
User-agent: AhrefsBot
Crawl-delay: 10

User-agent: SemrushBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: MJ12bot
Disallow: /

User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: BLEXBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: DataForSeoBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: serpstatbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: PetalBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: AspiegelBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ZoominfoBot
Disallow: /

# Amazonbot throttled (2026-06-12): 893 req/hr observed on ctorank; Alexa/Rufus crawler
# with minimal traffic value. Amazonbot documents Crawl-delay support.
User-agent: Amazonbot
Crawl-delay: 10

# Training-crawler throttle (2026-10-19): uncached directory pages, server load.
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: anthropic-ai
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: PerplexityBot
User-agent: meta-externalagent
Crawl-delay: 10

Sitemap: https://www.vcsift.com/sitemap.xml
sitemap.xml 200 OK
Type Sitemap Index URLs 10 entries Valid XML Yes
Child Sitemaps:
A
URL Variants
www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS
PASS
www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS
Info::
www/non-www redirect configured correctly (preferred: www)
Warning::
HTTP→HTTPS redirect is not permanent
Got: HTTP 302 Expected: 301 or 308 permanent redirect

www / non-www

200https://www.vcsift.com/
301https://vcsift.com/

Preferred variant: www

HTTP → HTTPS

302http://www.vcsift.com/ → https://www.vcsift.com/

Use a permanent redirect (301 or 308) instead of a temporary one

A+
Domain Intelligence
vcsift.com — via Cloudflare, Inc., 6 months old, hosted on Hetzner
PASS
vcsift.com — via Cloudflare, Inc., 6 months old, hosted on Hetzner
Info::
Domain registered until Apr 9, 2027 (5 months remaining)
Info::
DNSSEC is not enabled
DNSSEC protects against DNS spoofing attacks. While not required, enabling DNSSEC adds an additional layer of security. Contact your DNS provider to enable it.
Info::
Registrar: Cloudflare, Inc.
Warning::
Registrar lock is NOT enabled
The domain can be transferred without an unlock step. Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) in your registrar's control panel to protect against unauthorized or accidental transfers.
Info::
Hosting: Hetzner
Got: AS213230
Domain expiry

170 days

April 9, 2027

SSL certificate

75 days

Issued by Let's Encrypt

Domain age

6 months

Registered April 9, 2026

DNSSEC

Not enabled

Protects against DNS spoofing

Hosting

Hetzner

ASN AS213230

178.156.198.24

Registrar

Cloudflare, Inc.

Unlocked 2 NS records
Expiry timeline
Today
+1 year
Domain expiry SSL expiry Danger zone (≤30 days)
Recommended actions
  • Enable DNSSEC to protect visitors from DNS spoofing
  • Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) to block unauthorized domain transfers
Registrar Cloudflare, Inc.
Created April 9, 2026 (6 months ago)
Expires April 9, 2027 (5 months)
Last Updated April 9, 2026
Name Servers chip.ns.cloudflare.com, paloma.ns.cloudflare.com
DNSSEC Not enabled
Hosting
IP Address 178.156.198.24
ASN AS213230 (HETZNER-CLOUD2-AS - Hetzner Online GmbH, DE)
Provider Hetzner
Data source: rdap (0.4s)

DNSSEC protects against DNS spoofing attacks. While not required, enabling DNSSEC adds an additional layer of security. Contact your DNS provider to enable it.

Why this matters

Without DNSSEC, an attacker who can poison your DNS can hijack your domain — and SSL certs alone don't stop them.

Learn more ▾

DNSSEC adds cryptographic signatures to DNS records, preventing forged responses from poisoning resolver caches. Without it, an attacker who controls the network path can redirect your domain to a malicious server before any HTTPS handshake happens. Most modern registrars (Cloudflare, Google Domains, Route 53) enable it with one toggle.

Source: ICANN / RFC 4033

The domain can be transferred without an unlock step. Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) in your registrar's control panel to protect against unauthorized or accidental transfers.

Why this matters

Without registrar lock, an attacker who phishes your registrar credentials can transfer the domain in minutes — total brand hijack.

Learn more ▾

Registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited, clientDeleteProhibited) requires extra verification before any transfer/update/delete. Every major registrar offers it free. Combined with 2FA on your registrar account, it's the strongest defense against domain hijacking.

Source: ICANN / domain-security best practice

A
HTTP Probe Timing
Total 483 ms — DNS, TCP, TLS, TTFB, content transfer breakdown
PASS
DNS Lookup DNS Lookup — time to resolve the domain name to an IP address.
37 ms
TCP Connect TCP Connect — time to establish a TCP connection to the server.
101 ms
TLS Handshake TLS Handshake — time to complete the HTTPS encryption handshake.
144 ms
Time to First Byte Time to First Byte — how long the server takes to respond with the first byte of data.
386 ms
Total Time Total request time from DNS lookup through full response.
484 ms

Connection waterfall

DNS Lookup 37 ms TCP Connect 101 ms TLS Handshake 144 ms Server Processing 104 ms Content Transfer 98 ms
All checks on this page are automated. Results are estimates - run targeted manual reviews when the score affects a release decision.

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