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I have a somewhat complicated situation. We have a blog let's say at myblog.com and it is running fine. However, we now want to cut the budget and use a free hosting service isgreat.org. The service allows us to let a domain point to it so that we can host our blog.

The problem is, now I'll have to change the domain's HOST record in order to start testing it. I obviously want a way to test it before actually changing anything. Using an alias for test.myblog.com requires the domain to be managed in the service's control panel, which I don't want either.

So, the question is, can I type the IP address of the host in the browser, and somehow tell it that I am referring to it under the domain name myblog.com, so that it will show me my blog, instead of a default page?

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2 Answers 2

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You can edit your hosts file in a way that this domain name points to different IP. For example in Windows the host file is in:

\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\

In Ubuntu it is in:

/etc/

So you find the file, open it with simple text editor, and write the new IP and the domain name. It must look something like:

92.152.175.86 mydomain.com

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  • yes thanks! how can I forget that? BTW you meant "Ubuntu", didn't you?
    – phunehehe
    Oct 1, 2010 at 10:04
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On the Mac, changing the hosts file is a little tricky, so use the free Gas Mask to do this.

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  • Nice app! I wouldn't class it as "tricky" on the Mac though, in case anyone is wondering it's /etc/hosts and works how you would expect.
    – ZoFreX
    Jan 19, 2011 at 9:49
  • "tricky" may be overstating it, but i think a lot of Mac users don't know how to view hidden files, and this app cuts out that step.
    – nthonygreen
    Jan 20, 2011 at 10:29

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