Adding Your Site

The first step in setting up your network is to add it to the DNSFilter Dashboard, which is located at app.dnsfilter.com for most customers. (If a different link was provided in your welcome email, use that one.)

Adding a network to the dashboard is essential, because DNSFilter operates a customer-only, closed resolver. Until your site is added, we won’t recognize the queries and respond to them.

Adding Your Site

A Site is considered a single, physical location (or “network”), which usually has one <> address, but may have more if utilizing multiple internet connections, or if you’re a larger organization with an IP subnet.

Adding a Site is the quickest and most comprehensive way to be protected with DNSFilter.

Each Site can only have one Policy or Filtering Schedule assigned, unless utilizing the NAT IPs feature (which allows you to assign separate policies by LAN subnet).

When you sign-in for the first time, you will be automatically placed in the Deployments -> Sites section of the Dashboard.

Add the following information to your Site:

• Name (ex: NYC Office)
• Physical Address (If you do not enter a physical address here, it will not be represented in your Geo Activity Map)
• IP Address(es) or Dynamic DNS Hostname (see notices below). If your site has more than one IP address (multiple WAN links, failover links, Cloud VoIP BPX etc) you should add these additional IPs as well.

If you have only one WAN IP address, you can use the Fill Current IP button to add the IP address of your current location.

Create and Assign a Filtering Policy

Creating a Policy

The final step to add your site to the dashboard is to create a Filtering Policy and assign it to that location. This will determine what is allowed/blocked on your network, as well as what the users on that network see when they surf to a blocked website.

Begin by adding a name to the policy, then use the tabs at the top to set filtering categories, safesearch settings, threat categories, and Allow list/Block list entries. When you click on a category, it will turn red and show an 🚫 icon to show that blocking is active for that category. Once you are content with your settings, you may save your policy.

Assigning a Policy

Up to this point, you have added your network and a policy in the dashboard. All that remains is to assign your newly-created policy to your network.

Navigate to the Deployments -> Sites section on the dashboard. Then along the line for the site there will be a dropdown for “Policy/Schedule”. Click to select your desired policy.

Congratulations, your DNSFilter account is now setup to receive and filter traffic from your network!

At this point, we recommend setting one of your PCs to point to us in order to test your connection.

Bulk Import Sites

You can bulk import sites by importing a CSV file through your dashboard on the Sites view under Deployments. In order to successfully import with a CSV, you will need your Policy ID and Block Page ID. 

To find your Policy ID, select Policies, then click on the policy that you need the ID of. You will find the Policy ID in the URL as seen in the screenshot below:

To find your Block Page ID, select Policies then Block Pages, then click on the block page that you need the ID of. You will find the Block Page ID in the URL as seen in the screenshot below:

Once you have your Policy ID and Block Page ID, simply create a CSV formatted like the example that is found here. 

Once you have filled out your CSV, navigate to Deployments -> Sites and select Import CSV as seen in the screenshot below.