Recently I was working on a site having some DNS issues. I could only view the site at the old DNS address and did not want to wait and could not access it by IP address due to the circumstances. I had to view the site in order to complete the project. Because the database was large installing on a local system to test was out of the question due to time constraints.

Here’s what I ended up doing to view that site at the url before the DNS had propagated.

In Windows XP, I went to C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
I opened the host file, typed in the URL and IP address in the format of the localhost example given:

127.0.0.1        localhost 

Saved the file, closed my browser window, opened a new browser window and went to the URL. It worked.

When I was done I removed the entry and it went back to the old DNS again.

Great time saving tip for working with a site before the DNS has propagated.