Cloud Hosting/Hosts File

Setting Up Hosts File

• You can use these steps to view your site on your new Cloud server
• NOTE: once you have completed the migration - make sure to remove this info from your host file

Video

• XMission Support: Setting up hosts file

Windows

• Make sure you can view file extensions on your computer. Click on My Computer > Tools > Folder Options
  • Under Hidden Files and Folders - make sure it states Show hidden files and folder
  • Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types
  • Uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)
  • Click Apply

Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\

• In this folder you should see a file called hosts
• You can right click and choose Open or Open with - choose Notepad (NOTE: Windows 8 and higher users need to open Notepad as administrator.)

Note: on Windows 7 you can also use the "run" tool and open the hosts file by entering:

notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Here is what it will look like.

• Note that the pound character "#" causes the DNS software on your computer to consider anything that follows it in a line as a comment and will therefore ignore that part
• You will want to add the following information we send you to the bottom of your hosts file:

<ip-address>  <domain.com>  <www.domain.com>

• Where the <ip-address> is the ip address of your server (eg. 166.70.181.4) and <domain.com> is your domain name so it will look something like this:

166.70.22.1   mydomain.com  www.mydomain.com

Linux

• Edit your hosts file though a terminal

• The line will look similar to this:

• From here you will want to add the IP address of your server and the hostname (example: 166.70.181.4 example.com www.example.com)
• Save and close your file. Now when you go to your domain on your computer it will resolve to the IP address you specified.

Mac OSX

• You will need to open a terminal which can be done through your utilities folder.

• Edit your hosts file though a terminal

  Type in sudo vim /etc/hosts

• You'll be prompted for a password, this is your user password to login to your computer.

• Once you've successfully submitted your user password, you will need to press " I " to enter insert mode, you will know you are in "insert mode" as -- INSERT -- should appear at the bottom left corner.

• Add the IP address of your server and the hostname (eg. 166.70.198.101 example.com www.example.com)
• Should look like this

• Save and close your file

  To save your file, first press "Esc" to exit "insert mode" then you can enter  :wq

  

• Run this in your terminal dscacheutil –flushcache

• Now when you goto your domain on your computer it will resolve to the IP address you specified.
• You can test this by running a "Ping" in your terminal and see your host is resolving to the specified ip address.

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