Plesk: How to access a website using a local hosts file?

Modifying the ‘hosts’ file allows overriding DNS for a domain on a particular machine and causes local machine to look directly at the IP address specified.

For example, the domain example.com is hosted on a server with IP address 203.0.113.2, but is not resolved to this IP from the Internet. To make your PC/Mac resolve this website to this particular IP address, just add the line below to your local ‘hosts’ file like this:

203.0.113.2 example.com www.example.com

Modifying the ‘hosts’ file…

on Windows OS

• Start a command prompt as an Administrator.
• Run the following command to open the ‘hosts’ file in Windows Notepad:

C:> notepad C:WindowsSystem32Driversetchosts

• Add domain’s IP address and a domain name on a new line.
• Click File > Save to save your changes.

on macOS

• Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal.
• Open the hosts file by typing the following line in a terminal window:

  # sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

  Type your domain user password when prompted

• Add domain’s IP address and a domain name on a new line.
  Note: The file contains some comments (lines starting with a hash “#” symbol) and some default hostname mappings (for example, 127.0.0.1 – local host). Add your new mappings after the default mappings.
• Save the hosts file by pressing ‘Control+x’ and answering y.
• Make changes take effect by flushing the DNS cache with the following command:

  # dscacheutil -flushcache

   

on Linux OS

• In Linux terminal, open the ‘hosts’ file in a text editor:

  # vi /etc/hosts

• Add domain’s IP address and a domain name on a new line.
• Save the changes and close the file.