As most webmasters will tell you – changing around your hosts file can be a pain in the ass. Now the average user, or browser, probably will never have to deal with modifying their machines hosts file – however as a webmaster you’ll eventually run into a situation where you’re working on a website where the DNS has recently been updated or changed. So now you need to make sure that when you connect to ftp.website.com you’re hitting the correct server – so what do you do?

You head on over to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ and open up your hosts file in Notepad, with administrative rights. Edit it. Save it. Now if you don’t have hidden files/folders enabled – that’s another step you’ll need to go through to get to your systems hosts file. It’s not difficult, but it gets annoying. When you start working on numerous websites within a given week – and find many of them to be freshly launched websites where the domain name was just registered – constantly digging for your hosts file starts to get really annoying.

Now there is an awesome shortcut trick that I’ve been using for a while which you can find on HowToGeek; however there is an even better way to manage your hosts file. Introducing the free hostsController – a hosts file editor. hostsController allows you to block/unblock, boost/unboost or redirect any domain you want. Giving you a completely free access to:

  • A simple and advanced editor
  • Add-ons that allow you to perform an action to a large group of domains
  • Backups, options and security

hostsController simple editor will easily let you block/unblock, boost/unboost, or redirect your domain names; while the advanced editor gives you full access to your hosts file allowing you to delete any line you want, boost, unboost and even redirect any page you want.

Published by Michael Boguslavskiy

Michael Boguslavskiy is a full-stack developer & online presence consultant based out of New York City. He's been offering freelance marketing & development services for over a decade. He currently manages Rapid Purple - and online webmaster resources center; and Media Explode - a full service marketing agency.

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