How To Not Wait For DNS Propagation
July 19, 2010, 10:04 pm 
2 Comments
So you’ve set your domain to point to some new nameservers, and here comes the waiting game. But at times, the waiting game can turn into a nightmare when, without a preview of what the website looks like, you’ll be surprised at what our friends over the ocean are seeing while you’re confidently waiting for the propagation to an ISP near you. There’s a way to trick your computer into resolving a domain locally, instead of going through the Internet. This way you can have it resolve to the IP address of the website immediately.
Open up the hosts file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\ (you may need to open it in Notepad ran as an Administrator, otherwise it won’t let you write to it).
At the end of the file add a line such as:
209.188.85.91 geekshout.com
Now open up the website in any browser, and it will resolve to the IP address you typed in, directly.
Wow this is perfect and so easy! I’m thinking about writing a “quick dns propagation” app that writes entries to the hosts file.
You might also want to add the www version of the URL too, such as:
209.188.85.91 geekshout.com
209.188.85.91 http://www.geekshout.com