Normally, domain name lookup is accomplished by communicating with computer servers on the Internet that are dedicated to the task. Those servers are called domain name servers. The hosts file enables each personal computer to act as its own local domain name server.

Given that domain name servers do the same thing, what is this good for? For the purposes of launching a website, a host file is handy because domain name servers can take up to 48 hours to update across the internet. So if you register a new domain name and set up a hosting account, you may not be able to see your site as you normally would, by typing its domain name in a browser, for 24-48 hours after you’ve configured the DNS entry with your domain name registrar.

However, if you add an entry for your site in your personal computer’s hosts file, you’d be able to access it with its domain name immediately, albeit, no one else would until the NDS servers actually update. But this is useful if you want to start working on creating your site right away.

Updating a hosts file after you register a domain is entirely optional and is not necessary if you’re willing to wait the 24-48 hours before starting to work on your site.

And now, let’s see how it’s done.

Updating Your Hosts File on the Mac (OS X)

I’ll start with updating the hosts file on the Mac since I do most of my work on a Mac.

Open up the Terminal application. Terminal is normally found in the Applications > Utility folder. If your can’t find it, Just search for “terminal” in SpotLight:

The Terminal gives access to the underling Unix directory structure of OS X, and looks like this:

Once in Terminal, type the following command at the prompt and hit Enter:

sudo pico /private/etc/hosts

Here’s what this means: “sudo” makes the command run with superuser privileges since the hosts file is a protected file, “pico” is a text editor, and the rest is the directory location and name of the hosts file.

After you’ve hit enter, due to the “sudo” command, you’ll be asked for a password. That’s just the password to your user account on the Mac. Type it and hit Enter.

Next, what you’ll see is the hosts file from within the text editor:

Notice the following line:

174.132.115.253          makeawebsitegreat.com

The numbers on the left are the IP address, and the domain name is on the right. Just add a line like that to your hosts file. You’ll have to use your cursor keys to get around that file and go to the last line. Your specific file may have other entries. Just add yours at the very end of whatever is there. The number of spaces or tabs between the IP address and the domain name doesn’t matter.

To find the IP address of your hosting account, locate the email you’ve gotten when you signed up for hosting. The email from Host Gator, for example, says something like this:

Your sites IP address:
174.132.115.251

If you can’t get a hold of your IP address, contact your hosting company’s technical support.

Once you’re finished editing, hit Ctrl-X to save and exit:

Enter y when asked “save modified buffer?” And after that just hit the Enter key to use the default file name.

Then, type in the command exit, and close the Terminal window.

Updating Your Hosts File on Windows

Editing the hosts file on Windows is a lot simpler than on the Mac. The Mac’s OS X operating system goes to great lengths to hide advanced, low level features that come from its underlying Unix base. And unfortunately, the hosts file is one of those advanced features, and therefore the Terminal app is needed to update it.

However, in Windows it’s possible to access the hosts file as you normally would any other file on your computer. The hardest part is to find the hosts file, which is not that difficult. Once you find it, the hosts file has the same format on Windows as on the Mac.

On Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, and 7, the hosts file resides in the %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\directory, and the file name is Hosts with no extension. %SystemRoot% is the installation directory of your Windows files, which on my Vista machine is C:\Windows\. So for example, the hosts file on my Windows computer is at C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\Hosts.

Once you’ve located your hosts file, just open it up with Notepad, add a line with your IP address and domain name as I explained in the Mac OS X section above, save it with Ctrl-S, and exit Notepad.

Updating The Hosts File on Other Operating Systems

Hosts files on all common operating systems are of the same format as on the Macintosh OS X and Windows. It’s only a matter of finding the file and adding your entry. You can refer to the following Wikipedia page for details on how to find the hosts file on other operating systems not mentioned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file

One Last Thing…

If you rely on editing the hosts file for accessing your site in the first 48 after updating the DNS, it’s always best to take out the entry after that time is up and check that all went well with the update. Otherwise, you might end up with a site that no one else can see without realizing it. Instead of deleting your entry in the hosts file, you may comment it out by inserting the # character in front of the line.

Once you’ve taken out the entry and saved the hosts file, visit your site. If it shows up, it’s all good!

When someone types your domain name into a Web browser’s address bar, expecting some Web page to come up, what actually happens next is as follows:

1. The browser looks up the Internet address (also known as Internet Protocol address or, IP address) of the computer server that has your website, i.e. the computer you have your Web hosting account on. This is called DNS (domain name server) lookup, but more on that later.
2. Using the IP address, which is numeric, the browser contacts your Web server, and requests the page that matches what was typed into the browser’s address bar. The request is made using the famous hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP).
3. The Web server contacts browser and sends it the appropriate data that makes up the Web page.
4. The browser takes that data and renders the page.

What we need to concern ourselves with here is the first step. Once that’s set up, all the rest is taken care of by the browser and Web server automatically.

The question we should be asking now is the following: Given a domain name, how does the browser know the IP address of the Web server? And the answer is that it does so by looking it up using domain name servers. A domain name server (DNS) is a computer that serves up a look-up table that matches domain names with IP addresses.

And to make everything work, all you need to do is tell your domain name registrar the name of the DNS of your hosting company.

After you’ve signed up with a Web hosting company, you should have received an email message detailing the DNS information. And you should have been provided with the names of a minimum of two domain name servers, one primary and one backup. Your domain name servers should typically be named something like ns1.SomeDomain.com and ns2.SomeDomain.com. (Domain names are not case sensitive, by the way.)

Now that you have the names of your domain name servers handy, I’ll show you how to set up your GoDaddy domain name registration account to use those. If you didn’t register your domain name with GoDaddy, the principles are similar but the specifics are obviously different for your registrar.

Log into your GoDaddy account and go to the Domain Manager. One way of doing this is by using the menu option on the left sidebar:



The domain manager will display a list of all your registered domains. Now, using the check boxes, select the domain(s) you’d like to set the name servers for:



After you’ve made your selection, click on the “Nameservers” icon, which is located on the toolbar just above the domain name list:


Next, a screen will come up letting you enter your DNS information (click image to enlarge):



Select the “I host my domains with another provider” option, enter your domain servers in the appropriate fields, click “OK“, and you’re done.

One last thing you should know is that DNS changes are not instantaneous. They may take up to 48 hours to propagate throughout DNS machines scattered across the Internet so that every person in the World can access your site.

Once the DNS updates for your Internet point of access, you’ll notice your domain no longer shows an ugly parked domain page full of links and ads, but instead it either shows some default page in your Web hosting account or gives some “page not found” message.

It’s a bit of a downer that you have to wait up to 48 hours to see your site when you type your domain into a browser. Luckily, there is a way to make that happen immediately, but for your computer alone.

Every computer has its own local domain name table called a hosts file. In the next post I’ll show you how to edit that file so that you can access your website and start working on it immediately after registering a domain and setting up hosting.

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