Before going to the main part, I would like to explain what is “DNS Propagation”. It is nothing but the time delay between the time you make DNS changes on your respective server and the time it takes these changes to be seen by you and your users. Simple!
If you are interested in accessing your website or if you want to make some changes during DNS propagation, then this little guide could be useful to you. With the help of Command Prompt and some other tools you can access website during DNS Propagation, it’ll be helpful for us to make the site live.
Access Website During DNS Propagation
1. Go to this website – http://www.hcidata.info/host2ip.htm.
2. Copy and paste the Nameservers of your site in the Hostname field.
For example, ns1.hellboundbloggers.com and click on “Convert to IP“. You’ll get the corresponding details,
Hostname: ns1.hellboundbloggers.com
IP Address: 207.7.90.59
3. Now do the same for your site, and copy the IP address.
4. Now on your computer, go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\
5. Open the Hosts file with any text editor (Notepad preferred).
6. Now go to the end and paste the IP address, give a space, then enter your domain name.
Like, for example 207.7.90.59 hellboundbloggers.com
Now save the Notepad file.
7. Now you are going to do two things,
(i) Clear your Browser History and Cookies. You can easily do this by going to the Internet Options and deleting them.
(ii) Clear your DNS Cache. Open Command Prompt and enter ipconfig/flushdns followed by ipconfig/registerdns
Now open your browser and go to your site. You will be able to access the website without complete DNS Propagation. After you complete your works, don’t forget to delete the line from the Hosts file or you can add a # symbol in front of the IP Adress to disable it.
Do tell me your views? Have you ever tried this during your site’s DNS propagation? Feel free to share your views on comments below.
Good to be as private name server like ns1.example.com.Thanks for information.
Nice, Pradeep. Going to try this. Is there any way to register own nameservers like ns1.mysite.com ?
Either you can purchase private nameservers individually on some hosts or purchase a VPS account bro. 🙂
Yes, you can do that with Reseller hosting too.
Great tips. This will allow us to setup our website and preview it before the DNS is fully propagated.
Like it. DNS propagation tip is nice. I want to know it from long time.
Great!! i think till the time of domain propagation we are making our computer a virtual server? isn’t it!
Thanks Pradeep. After reading this, I got much anxiety to go this. Going to try this 🙂