Frontpages Web Hosting Support
Editing Your Host File
For various reasons it may be necessary to update the Hosts file on your computer to properly resolve a web site by its domain name. The most common reason for this is to allow people to view or publish web content immediately after purchasing a new domain name or transferring an existing domain name to our service.New and transferred domain names have a delay period that can be anywhere from a few hours to a few days. During this period of time the new or transferred domain information propagates around the internet, and is generally unavailable.
If you need to update your site immediately and cannot wait for the propagation of domain information around the internet, you can edit a file on your computer as a temporary work around.
Please note: this work around is only valid on the computer on which the change was made.
It will NOT make the web site available to anyone on the internet.
Procedure
Windows contains a file called 'hosts' that will force resolution of your domain name.Open the hosts file - Go to the 'Start' menu and choose 'Run.' Type the following in the Run dialog box (without the quotes).
For Windows NT and 2000: "c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc"
For Windows XP: "c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc"
Click the 'Ok.' button.
This should open a window with several files in it.
Find the file called 'Hosts' and double-click it. If asked, specify that you would like to choose a program to open the file with from a list of programs. Choose 'Notepad' in the program list.
Edit and save the hosts file
The contents of your Hosts file should look something like the following:
We will start typing on a new line at the bottom of the file. To do so, click your mouse so that the cursor is at the very end of the last line and hit <Enter> to start a new line.
Enter the following two lines of text like this example:
123.123.123.123 yourdomainname.com
123.123.123.123 www.yourdomainname.com
Your Hosts file should looks something like this when you are done.
***PLEASE NOTE: You must replace the 123.123.123.123 number with the IP Address from your server. For most of you this value will be 24.240.192.18. Replace 'yourdomainname.com' and 'www.yourdomain.com' with the domain name of your site.
Close the Hosts file and save it when asked.
***PLEASE NOTE: At this point you should be able to view and publish to your web site using your domain name. After 3-4 days, you will want to undo this change to the host file so that you can check to see that your domain name is now resolving without assistance over the internet.