Developing sites without valid DNS

[manwreck]

Hi,

I need to figure out how to develop new sites without the benefit of the domain name.

Currently I use the "preview site" link within the Plesk interface. It looks like this:

https://vps3436.managemyvps.com:8443/sitepreview/http/canowpac.org/?previous_page=dom_ctrl

As you can imagine, that makes it hard to develop code dependent on page or domain names. My programmers all have to go in and fix code after we point the domain to the finished site.

I am hoping to preview sites with a simple IP, or, second best, with this kind of format:

http://<ipaddress>/~<username>/

Anyone have suggestions?

Thanks,

Damian

 

[breun]

On a Linux system or Mac you can just add an entry to your /etc/hosts file. If you have setup a domain called somedomain.com on your server on IP address 123.123.123.123 you'd add the following to /etc/hosts:

123.123.123.123 somedomain.com

After that you should be able to browse somedomain.com on your server although no DNS server has it listed.

There is also a hosts file on Windows, but it's buried down deep somewhere. You'd have to google that one for the exact location.

(Don't forget to remove the entry after registering the domain and setting up 'real' DNS.)

 

[manwreck]

breun -- thanks for the quick reply.

However, I am not sure where that directory is on my OSX system. I searched the entire HD and no directories called "etc". Maybe I am missing something.

Also, I would prefer to find a way to map individual IP addresses to sites at a server level, using Plesk, just because I have multiple developers working on one site.

Thanks,

Damian

 

[breun]

However, I am not sure where that directory is on my OSX system. I searched the entire HD and no directories called "etc". Maybe I am missing something.

The Finder won't let you see it, but it's there. Just open a Terminal.

Also, I would prefer to find a way to map individual IP addresses to sites at a server level, using Plesk, just because I have multiple developers working on one site.

"Mapping IP addresses to sites at a server level" is DNS. I'm afraid you can't do DNS without DNS.

 

[manwreck]

Yes, I understand I can't have DNS without having DNS. =)

But isn't the DNS for an IP address that I want to associate with the development site different than the DNS I would use when we are ready to switch the domain name?

I am planning to purchase more IP's for use in development, I just need to know how to map them to individual Web sites using Plesk.

Damian

 

[breun]

That depends on the nameservers you're using. If you setup your desktop machine to use your server's nameservers, then you can just enter the domain name you setup in Plesk and your nameserver will be able to resolve the name to the dev server's IP address, even though in 'the real world' that name maps to another server.

You can setup a default domain to serve up for a specific IP address in Plesk. You don't really need more IP addresses, unless you're planning to use this default domain for an IP address setup. Normally you only need exclusive (extra) IP addresses for anonymous FTP and serving SSL sites.

 

[manwreck]

That is good information, thanks. I will see if my developers can set this up, since it is their computers that they are developing on.

Thanks for all the help -- I believe we can consider this closed now.

Damian