I’m happy to show off the first phase of our new OpenDNS Dashboard, which we launched today. Today’s overhaul makes the settings area of the Dashboard dramatically easier to use. But first, let me explain what was wrong with the older version.

Our old settings page on the Dashboard succumbed to feature bloat and became hard to navigate. The left side navigation was lengthy and unintuitive — and not just to novice Internet users but even to our power users. Every feature we added just became a new navigational element on the left side of the page. And most of those features only had one option! The reason this happened is simple — we like to constantly iterate on feedback from all of you and that means we roll out new features all the time. While we love that part, it doesn’t work so well when you are trying to provide a consistent and intuitive interface for users.

Our goals for the new settings page were very clear:

1. Make the interface dramatically easier to use for novice Internet users.
2. Don’t remove any of the existing functionality.
3. Provide the level of detail our power users demand.

It was a tall order, but our all-star engineering team was able to do it. Without further ado, here’s a quick walk-through:

Left side navigation

The left side navigation has been cut from 11 different choices down to 3. Content Filtering, Customization and Advanced Settings. Content Filtering is where you can block categories of sites, block individual domains, or whitelist domains. It’s all in one place. Customization is where you can modify the look and feel of the OpenDNS Guide and blocked pages with your own logo and messaging. Advanced Settings, like it sounds, is one page with all of our various knobs and checkboxes where you can tailor our service to best meet your needs.

Content Filtering

The Content Filtering page was previous spread out over four different pages. Now it’s just one. You can use one of our preset bundles of filters or customize things to pick and choose from any of the 50+ categories we have available. Just below the categories you’ll see a much simpler way of individually allowing and blocking domains that you want to exclude from category blocking. An example for this might be if you block the Social Networking category but want to “always allow” the business social networking website LinkedIn.

Advanced Settings

This page has all the knobs. If you want to turn off stats processing, you do it here. If you want to make sure OpenDNS works with your VPN, you can do it here. All on one page. We’ve also updated all the text to make things more clear and easier to understand.

There are a lot of other small usability tweaks that have gone into making this settings page as easy to use as possible. Go take it for a spin and let us know what you think.

We just launched a subtle new feature for all OpenDNS account holders (it’s free) that helps protect against a class of DNS vulnerabilities known as DNS Rebinding attacks. In short, these attacks take advantage of design flaws or weaknesses in how some Internet applications (notably web browsers) cache DNS data so that internal network resources can be accessed by external servers regardless of firewall settings.

This can happen because the browser (or similarly exploitable vector) acts as a conduit between the private internal resource and the external server. In plain English this means that some bad guy on the Internet can access your home access point, wireless access point, internal file server or any other networked device on your network just by getting you to load some javascript on a webpage.

While this might seem like a browser issue, it’s fundamentally a DNS issue. This is why OpenDNS created what will become a new class of filtering tools called Suspicious Response Filters.

These new filters are different from the filtering options we’ve offered to date in one important way. Rather than filtering based on the DNS question being asked (eg, “Where is foo.com?”) these filters inspect the DNS reply before we send it back to you (eg, “Does this reply point to an internal resource?”). Like most of our features, this is an industry first. No other major DNS software or service offers anything like this.

When I started OpenDNS I often told people one of my main goals was to design a global DNS service that empowered people to let the good DNS in and keep the bad DNS out, for whatever definition of good and bad they had. This feature gets us one step closer to delivering on that promise.

The feature is turned off by default, but I encourage everyone to go into your account and turn it on. Those of you with domains that point to private address space legitimately (to your intranet, for example) should also visit the domain whitelist page and whitelist your domain. Naturally, any domain in your whitelist will not have its responses filtered in any way and will be explicitly allowed.

One of our favorite features is the option to customize the logo and message on OpenDNS Guide for every network in your free account.

Some typical Guide messages:

Australian Zoo and OpenDNS, teaming up to bring you a safer, faster Internet experience.

That domain isn’t working… try one of the search results below.

Mary, you typed that wrong, but I still love you!

Many customers wanted different messages on different pages, so they could make the domain blocked page language more direct:

Domain blocked per company policy.

Not allowed at school.

No Facebook until you finish your homework, Jimmy.

We’re happy to grant our customers’ wishes.

Now you can have a unique message on each of four different pages:

• OpenDNS Guide
• Phish blocked
• Domain blocked
• Adult site blocked

Use your network Settings to make your own.

When we launched OpenDNS Adult Site Blocking in June we gave you the power to block adult websites with simple categories. However, when blocking categories of sites there is sometimes a need for exceptions; that’s why we’re happy to announce the launch of a Domain Whitelist feature.

The Domain Whitelist feature is pretty simple, and I like how we explain it in the Dashboard:

A whitelist is a list of domains that will never be blocked on your network regardless of the content filtering categories you’ve turned on. For example, if you are blocking adult-themed sites but really want to visit celebrity gossip site tmz.com, you can add it to the whitelist below and get all the benefits of adult site blocking but still get your Paris Hilton fix.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in to tell us they wanted this feature. Even more thanks to Aaron, Joe, and Noah for making this happen on our side so quickly.

Our users tell us they want power and intelligence. Or rather, our users want intelligence about their network and the power to make changes.

Today we’re taking it up a notch, turning your OpenDNS Account into a comprehensive Dashboard which gives you a more precise understanding of your DNS traffic. The ability to gain insight into your DNS traffic and then have the tools to act without needing to install any software or buy any appliances is a huge win that every IT administrator in the world will enjoy. On top of that, it’s completely free.

Until today, we had a rudimentary (and rickety by our standards) stats system that would show you only a birds-eye view of your data. For instance, you could view a top-line number of total DNS requests and your top 10 domains per day. If you wanted to know the 11th domain, you were out of luck.

Want to know how many DNS requests you are doing each day? Want to know what your top domains are? Want to block sites easily all in an intuitive interface? Done, done and done. Now, you can get the count of every domain looked up on your network, over any period of time. View the data as a chart, a table or drop a CSV file into Excel. This is your data.

I like to think that the OpenDNS Dashboard is like Google Analytics for your DNS.

In the coming days and weeks you will see the Dashboard grow in functionality as we offer more ways to interpret your data. For those concerned about any privacy implications related to this new launch, I’d encourage you to read our post. Learn how we’re now storing less data about our users than ever before and giving you full control over what data we keep.

Thanks to our new Dashboard, OpenDNS is the rock solid, reliable DNS that is safer, faster, smarter and now gives you near-real-time statistics and trends about what’s happening with your network. Let us know what you think!