Why does localtunnel.me redirect to https://theboroer.github.io/localtunnel-www/

[gene1wood]

This repo's index.html links to localtunnel.me however when you browse to http://localtunnel.me/ it redirects to https://theboroer.github.io/localtunnel-www/ which is this fork of the localtunnel/www repo which contains these changes which modify references to localtunnel.me to loca.lt instead and the sponsor from courseoff to tunez.com

• is the localtunnel.me domain name still controlled by @defunctzombie ? or is it controlled by @TheBoroer now?
• should references in the localtunnel software to localtunnel.me be changed to something else? is @defunctzombie still running server infrastructure somewhere or has this been passed onto @TheBoroer?
• should the fork of localtunnel/www be PRd into the upstream?
• should something be added to the README at either the original or the fork that explains why the fork exists, who's running what these days, etc?

[TheBoroer]

Hey @gene1wood

I took over hosting the server for the localtunnel.me project for @defunctzombie. He still controls the localtunnel.me domain.

When taking over hosting, I needed full control over the domain in order to get free a Let's Encrypt Wildcard certificate (for *.localtunne.me subdomains) but only had a couple dns A records pointing to me from the original localtunnel.me domain.

I felt uncomfortable asking for full dns control over the domain since Roman doesn't know me personally (after all, I was just an internet stranger and it's his domain), I registered another domain loca.lt and got the wildcard for that domain.

I definitely want to make several improvements to the server/client project and ask for some PRs done but I need to find the time to do it. If there's PRs that won't break any backwards compatibility for others, feel free to @ me and I'll ask Roman to merge it in.

This repo doesn't need to be merged into upstream since it doesn't add anything new or valuable that benefits the community and others forking from here, it's just a personal fork :)

Hope that answers your questions :)

[gene1wood]

@TheBoroer thanks for those details, that makes sense.

I ask because I recently went through this sequence

• A colleague was needing to host a listener on her laptop I suggested ngrok or localtunnel having used them both in the past
• I googled localtunnel and the first result was the client https://github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel which I went to
• I tried to remember if one had to run a server or if there was a public one that somebody ran. I looked at the README on that page and saw reference to localtunnel.me as the server side component
• I browsed to http://localtunnel.me/ and it redirected me to https://theboroer.github.io/localtunnel-www/
• At this point my security spidey-sense started tingling. Why would the server side component URL of https://github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel redirect to a fork of the code? Who is @TheBoroer? Is localtunnel not being supported, the name registration lapsed and somebody took the domain name?
• I then looked through both the parent repo and the fork and couldn't find any explanation for why there was a fork and the domain name pointed to it
• I opened this GitHub issue and pointed my colleague to it saying "maybe hold off on using localtunnel as it's not clear to me if it's still supported or if it was taken over by someone"

What if you did this :

Have @defunctzombie delegate the ACME challenge domain name (_acme-challenge.localtunnel.me) to your server and you run the acme-dns service on your server. This would only require another couple DNS records in localtunnel.me and would allow you to issue wildcard certs for localtunnel.me (and no longer need loca.lt)

Ask @defunctzombie to change the www.localtunnel.me CNAME from pointing to localtunnel.me to instead point to localtunnel.github.io and have him enable the www.localtunnel.me custom domain on the localtunnel/www repo

Then you could PR your README changes minus the loca.lt domain name and change from your fork to this upstream localtunnel/www repo and then have your LoudTronix/cryous nginx server, instead of redirecting to https://theboroer.github.io/localtunnel-www/ redirect to www.localtunnel.me

Now things would look like this

• You can have automated wildcard letsencrypt certs using the acme-dns server
• Browsing to localtunnel.me redirects to www.localtunnel.me which shows the GitHub pages for localtunnel/www instead of your fork
• There's no need for a fork
• There's no need for loca.lt
• The whole project looks more legit
• You retain the full ability to run the service as @defunctzombie isn't anymore