If you've ever wanted to work on a production site while in development
and verify that all of the links work properly (even the ones that
include absolute URLs), an easy way to do it is to alter the HOSTS file
on your development computer. Your HOSTS file lets you map domain
names to IP addresses, just like a tiny DNS (Domain Name Service), but
only for your computer. You'll find the HOSTS file here:
C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\
If you're going to be doing a lot of editing, you can add a shortcut to your desktop pointing to the file.
Note that the HOSTS file does not have a file extension.
Do not add one. You should edit the file with Notepad; just be sure it doesn't try to be helpful and add a '.txt' extension when you save it.
Your Hosts file has entries like this one:
127.0.0.1 localhost
The first number is an IP address. 127.0.0.1 is a loopback
address -- it always refers to your computer. By default,
localhost always maps to your computer because of this entry in the
HOSTS file. Let's say you're working on a site called
'mysite.com' and you want to test a local instance of it using that
domain name. You would simply ensure that your local webserver
was set up to handle requests for that domain and IP address, and then
add this line to the HOSTS file:
127.0.0.1 mydomain.com
Now when you open your browser and go to 'mydomain.com' it will hit
your local webserver. Similarly, if you go to a command prompt
and try to ping mydomain.com, you'll get 127.0.0.1 back as the IP
address. To remove the entry, you can comment it out by adding a
'#' to the beginning of the line you wish to remove:
#127.0.0.1 mydomain.com
If you have questions, feel free to comment.