How to view a site before propagation

[BlackStorm]

To view your site before your domain name propagates you can edit a file within windows, save, enter the website address & hopefully it should work.

The file you need to edit is called hosts.

In Xp the file is located here: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc (Replace C with your hard drive letter)
In windows 98 it may be located under the Windows folder

Open the file using notepad or a similar application.

At the bottom of the file you will see

127.0.0.1 localhost

Below this add:

00.11.22.33 yourdomain.com

Replace 00.11.22.33 with the IP of the server your site is on, contact your support to get the IP for the server your site is hosted on.
Also replace yourdomain.com with your own domain name.

Save the file and open internet explorer.
Now enter the domain name in the address bar and hit enter.

There you go
Hope this helps,
John

 

[GordyMac]

Wow, that should be VERY useful John, been hopeing there was a way to do this for the longest time, thanks!

 

[wsac]

Very nice but you can see your site with out the domain name on linux http://123.25.3659/~user name/

 

[Vovex Technology]

Nice little trick john.... I always just make my links like "../hosting/blah.html" though so I dont use domain linking.... I guess in some cases you might need that.

I never knew that trick before. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

[BlackStorm]

Very nice but you can see your site with out the domain name on linux http://123.25.3659/~user name/

A lot of hosts have this disabled for security reasons Jose so you cant use it with quite a lot of hosts which is where this comes in handy

 

[wsac]

I see alot hosting got it on

 

[turnkey]

Yea, the host file is the best way to test. A lot of hosts are disabling http://your_ip_address/~yourusername because it steels bandwidth and can not be billed to the user. Both cPanel and Ensim does this.

 

[imported_maxhest]

Ensim does it I know, but I just figgured that out and I will tell new customers that, thanks!

 

[turnkey]

Ensim is http://site_ip_or_host_name/~user_domainname.ext

Use to run a Ensim server, now only cPanel

 

[GordyMac]

Excellent.. just used it to view my site

 

[GamesCreation]

Does it work on shared hosting, or only dedicated server?

I use this when working on my site at home and it's not uploaded, so I know I can upload it and everything will be the same

 

[Decker]

There are 2 files in either \WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc or \WINNT\system32\drivers\etc (depends on OS) - hosts & lmhosts (beware if you don't view file extensions they have a .SAM (for sample) extension and have no effect) they contain a local machine copy of what a WINS & DNS server would give. They can be very handy for sites you visit a lot as it will cut down the time required to find it along with the local cached DNS.

They just require ip address first then site/server after and are simple text files, but can really cut down response times.

Hope that helps some one out

That's just for anything though - before DNS propogation the server IP should be ok with user/pass if a host doesn't allow that I'd think it's a bit much in security terms as you can set everything up whilst waiting.