A question we regularly get from our customers is: “How can we test our website in advance; our website is currently still hosted by another internet company”. If your website is on a Linqhost server, but the domain name of which does not yet refer to our servers, and you want to view/test it, you can adjust the so-called hosts file. In this way, you influence the way in which your computer approaches your domain name.

When accessing a domain name, your PC will always look for the location to which it refers on the internet. This is done using DNS settings. The location of your domain name is known to your ISP. As soon as you call up this domain name, the DNS of your ISP will refer it to the correct location.

In this article we will explain exactly how to edit the hosts file on Windows 10 so that you can visit your website without going through a DNS server.

Start Windows Notepad as Administrator

Open the hosts file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc. If you don't see this file, change the text documents to all files at the bottom right.



In the hosts file, add the following line. Where you must replace yourdomainname.nl with your own domain name and 5.178.113.39 with the IP address of the Linqhost server where your website is located.



After this, save the change to the hosts file and the change will be active immediately.

Restart your web browser. When opening the website in your browser, your website will be loaded from our server.
Please note that you must undo this change once you have finished testing your website.