hosts file in windows and my developer - windows

One of my sites - mediadeals.co.uk is showing a blank page.
So I went back to my developer. He asked me to add this on my hosts file
in windows->system32->drivers->etc->hosts
74.86.205.232 mediadeals.co.uk
After doing this the site started working. What does this mean?

Thats crazy. All he did was make it work on YOUR machine. The hosts file simply maps names to IP addresses. Its like a local DNS. What needs to happen for the outside world to see this the DNS servers that are authoritative for mediadeals.co.uk need to have an A record pointing to 74.86.205.232.

How long ago did you register that site name? Don't forget that DNS entries may take a while to propagate across the web. 24 hrs+ sometimes.
And btw, that "fix" will ONLY work on your machine. It maps the friendly URL to an IP address for you, not for the world.

The reason its not working is there is no DNS record for it.
The hosts file is allowing you to point via a local DNS replacement.
All you need is to get the site hosted somewhere and a DNS entry setup.
If you like the site and he is willing to host for $150 then go for it, depending on your contract, if he should have done in the initial budget then you should question this.
RE

Related

Connect an Heroku app to a Ionos domain Name

I have developed an app and make it available via Heroku. Now I would like to add a custom domain name via Ionos however I don't know how to configure it. When using EC2 instances I would configure an static ip address but for Heroku, I don't know what to do. I have checked other post about this but none a precise or recent about what to do.
Thanks for you attention and have a Great day.
Had the exact same issue and here's how I made it work (just specifying I'm not an expert, so take this answer with a grain of salt):
First you'd have to go to Heroku in your app setting and then add the domain name you bought. It's important that you write the host when adding it, like put either www. or *. at the beginning of the domain. It will give you back a DNS target which you will then need to use on Ionos.
Secondly, you'd have to bind this DNS target on Ionos using a CNAME. Just go to your domains, click the one in your list, then open DNS and click Add a record. Choose CNAME and then put www as provider and past the DNS target you copied in target field. Finally, confirm the changes
Wait a few seconds/minutes, navigate to www.yourdomain.whatever and tada!
About static IP address, Heroku made some docs, and that won't work, you'd have to use dynamic ones. So in a nutshell, use CNAMEs instead of A records
Here are some docs if you want to dig more into this

I changed hosts file but can't see effects

I have to reach the wordpress platform installed by a certain hosting service, so I can build a new website (that will replace the old one), on a certain IP address. I changed my hosts file under their instructions. I put in it the IP address that they had given me and the website domain (separated by a single space). The hosts file hasn't any extension and it's in the right location (System32/drivers/etc - I'm on Windows 8). I cleaned browser and local DNS cache but nothing change: if I put in the browser the url they had given me (www.domain.com/?hostingname) I see the old website, not the wordpress platform. I tried to ping the domain and it returns a different IP address. What can I do? Thanks everyone in advance.
Ok, I solved. It's important to edit the hosts file with Windows Notepad and not with Notepad++

host network solutions domain on an amazon ec-2 box

I have looked this up and what was described in other answers did not work for me. I created a elastic ip from my ec-2 dashboard, and I set the A records of my domain (www, *, and #(none)) but it does not work. When I try to go directly to the ip address it also does not work though so I am not sure why this is happening.
Also where exactly does the elastic ip point? To my home folder, to the ec-2 user? It is not working now so I couldn't test it, but when it does work I still won't know.
Two things: remember that your domain will need to propagate, so leave it a few hours. Also, your elastic IP points to the machine you bound it to.
Almost forgot, you also need to edit your security zone to open up ports to allow incoming connections on those ports, as the default is to block everything except SSH.

DNS How do I setup Multiple A records pointing to the same sub-domain?

I have a sub-domain sub1.primary.com that works correctly. Now I need to setup sub2.primary.com and have it point to the same web application as sub1.primary.com. I tried it as a new A record and a new CName however when I try navigating to sub2.primary.com and expect to see sub1.primary.com I see a completely different application that sits on sub7.primary.com.
I have tried the A record solo, the CName solo, both together, and each instance with and without pointer records. I am using a Windows 2003 Server with IIS 6. I tried googling for an answer and couldn't find any information.
Here is my setup at the moment. I have created a Host (A) record in DNS for sub2.primary.com with an associated pointer record. I have added the sub2.primary.com to host headers of sub1.primary.com. Whenever I navigate to sub2.primary.com it displays sub7.primary.com instead of sub1.primary.com. Which is bizarre because if it were going to default to something I would rather it default to www.primary. com.
I don't know if it matters but the sub1.primary.com is under SSL and so is sub7.primary.com, along with 5 others on a *.primary.com SSL cert.
Each subdomain should have an A record pointing to the same IP. I sounds like this is what you tried first -- if that didn't work, I'd suggest making sure that your web server's vhost configuration is sending sub2.primary.com to the right place.
When IIS hosts multiple websites on the same IP address, it uses the incoming request URLs to guess which virtual site to send the client to.
In other words: you need to configure your host headers to accept both names for the appropriate web site. Microsoft publishes some good how-to documentation here and here, or here is a more detailed explanation.

How can I find the hosting company URL by domain name?

so I'm looking for a server host for a website that I'm building. Generally I know from continually visiting sites which ones I like and which I don't. I think this is a much better way than simply measuring ping times to determine speed.
So I want to know if there's a way to find out which hosting companies are hosting certain domains. Is this possible? whois.domaintools.com tells you certain information about the namesevers and the other about the DNS information about the host IP location. This is fine but I still don't get the website URL where I too can sign up for hosting. Often times the IP location name resolves to something really formal like XYZ Mallard Group Company LTD so this is basically useless to me. I need the hosting web URL instead.
Anyone got any ideas how I can find a domain's server hosting website url?
Thanks,
Marv
http://www.whois.net/ Will tell you the DNS (which a lot of time has the one you can sign up for, i.e. dns.dreamhost.com points you to dreamhost.com), and it also gives you more info about the registrar.
Finding hostnames of Ip's of server and DNS will help you to identify hosting provider

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