Make my system to resolve a domain name locally

Question

Is there a way to change our website address into a domain name. E.g - I am creating a intranet and just copying the server IP and port everywhere to open the web page. It looks odd to copy pasting the IP, so what should I do to give a domain name instead of IP address?

Solution 1

Try editing the hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc) and mapping http://xxx.xxx.xx.xx:8082/ to an address such as 'ArunsComputer` Keep in mind, that this would have to be done on all of these computers. There is a way to use a DNS server to do this, but editing the hosts file seems to be the simplest.

You would add a line like this to the hosts file:

133.33.33.7 MediaServer

To edit the hosts file, follow these steps:

1. Open start, and in the search bar type 'Notepad'
2. Don't hit enter, right click, and select 'Run as Administrator'
3. Go to file, and open the C:\ Drive.
4. From there go to the Windows -> System32 -> drivers -> etc (or just paste this into the address bar C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and hit enter)
5. The folder should be empty. Select the dropdown menu that says (Text Documents *.txt) and select 'All files'
6. Then, under the last entry in the file, add your IP and name you want to use, like 133.33.33.7 MediaServer
7. Save the file, open up IE, and type in the name that you used. It should work.

Solution 2

Depending on your operating system look for the host file (called like this on windows, linux and mac but resides at different locations). You can add entries to it. like this:

xxx.xxx.xx.xx    server

If you want the changes work in the whole network and not just on one computer you have to set up a local DNS server, edit its host file and set the computers to use this as default DNS.

If you want the adress to be accessible via the internet you have to buy a domain and let it point to your IP adress. This differs a bit depending on your country and if you have a static IP or not. In the later case you'd have to use a dynamic IP service like eg no-ip.

Comments

[cutrightjm]

First you will need to buy a domain if this is going to be a page hosted on the internet.. Or, is it just a local page for a company / house / other?

[Arun Kumar]

This is just a local page used for a team inside an organization, so is there any other way ?

[Dave M]

Do you have an internal DNS server on the network? OS?

[Arun Kumar]

Yes i have and one more thing, i am just a noob in these technical things. so unable to catch your technical terms soon. so unable to edit the host file and also am afraid that it would reflect on system's function.. Please clear me if i am wrong.

[David Schwartz]

<anything>.local will work. Just rig your internal DNS to do it.

[Arun Kumar]

I am using win7 and installed Drupal 7 to develop an intranet for my team.so while i show a demo in a client system i use to copy paste the Server's (Drupal 7 installed system) IP address. Also i am not so techincal to edit the sys32 files, so any suggestions for this ?

[cutrightjm]

@ArunKumar try the step by step example. Editing the hosts file isn't going to harm anything, it will only map that IP to the name you give it.

[Arun Kumar]

I just tried as you said - myipaddress<space>Internet Marketing. But there was no difference still it shows the IP address in the browser.

[slhck]

You can't have a space in the name

[Baarn]

It results in two seperate entries Internet and Marketing as alias for the same IP.

[cutrightjm]

I don't believe I included a space in any of them.. You can either name it Marketing, Internet_Marketing, or something else, but no spaces, only underscores and dashes ( - ).