How can I test my domain before it has been transferred? (localhost)

If you have built a website on a domain that does not yet point to our servers (in other words, it has not been transferred yet) and you want to test it, that is tricky. If you enter the domain name in your own browser, you will still see the old site.

If you are moving from ServerA to ServerB with us, the proxy server is not an option and using the hosts file is the only way to test the site. This is because the proxy server does not know which server it should contact.

Hosts file

Another way to simply use your own browser to test your site before the domain name has been transferred (even if it has not been registered yet) is to change the hosts file on your computer.

This fools your own computer a little, so that when you type the domain name into your browser, it already looks at our hosting package and not at your current (old) provider.

First you need to look up the IP address of the server at our end where your hosting package is located. You can do this by pressing the Windows key, typing 'cmd', opening the command prompt and typing the command 'ping linuxYYYY.webawere.nl'. Replace YYYY with the numbers that belong to your server. Another place where you can find the IP address is the DNS menu in the DirectAdmin control panel. The IP address is also shown next to the A record with your domain name.

Changing the hosts file on a Mac

1. Open the terminal (Spotlight, then type terminal in lower case)
2. Type this command: sudo nano /private/etc/hosts.
3. Type your password and press enter.
4. Now add this:
   <ipaddress> testnaam.nl
   <ipaddress> www.testnaam.nl
5. Now press ctrl-o to save it, then press enter.
6. Close the editor with ctrl-x.
7. Then enter dscacheutil -flushcache to clear the cache
8. Restart your browser

Changing the hosts file on Windows:

1. C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc <enter> You will then see the file hosts. This is the file you need to change (double-click it and edit it with Notepad)
2. And add:
   <ipaddress> testnaam.nl
   <ipaddress> www.testnaam.nl
3. Then restart your browsers.

If you now go to yourdomain.xx or www.yourdomain.xx in your browser, our server will be contacted and not the server of the old provider. You can undo this by removing the line again. Do not forget to do so once the domain name has been transferred.
Your firewall may ask for permission; you can safely give it, because you are making the change yourself.

Example of how the hosts file works

In this example we use the website of the Dutch railways, www.ns.nl. If you type www.ns.nl in your browser, your computer will look up which IP address belongs to www.ns.nl and then show the NS site. By changing the hosts file, however, you can more or less fool your computer. In the example below you can see that we point www.ns.nl to IP address 188.122.88.104, which is the IP address of weboke.nl. You can try this out by adding that line and then typing www.ns.nl to see what happens (do restart your browser first).