{"id":64,"date":"2024-07-15T00:15:48","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T00:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/?p=64"},"modified":"2026-01-12T01:45:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T01:45:50","slug":"staging-your-website-before-switching-your-dns-for-web-hosting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/staging-your-website-before-switching-your-dns-for-web-hosting\/2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Staging your website before switching your DNS for Web Hosting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/how-to-change-DNS-servers-1839944547.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-75\" srcset=\"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/how-to-change-DNS-servers-1839944547.png 1000w, https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/how-to-change-DNS-servers-1839944547-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/how-to-change-DNS-servers-1839944547-768x461.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When customers are looking to switch hosting providers, they usually stage the setup of their web site before completely switching the DNS (domain name servers). The problem comes when some scripts require you to access the script through a valid domain name. This poses an issue because you haven\u2019t switched the domain\u2019s DNS and don\u2019t want to until you know the script works 100%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1) Upload your site \/ databases, etc to your new web hosting account with GreenGeeks<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2) Locate your hosts file on your computer (On Windows XP, it\u2019s located at C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\DRIVERS\\etc\\HOSTS) and add the following line at the end of the file:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>IP_ADDRESS&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; www.yourdomain.com yourdomain.com<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Obviously change the IP_ADDRESS and yourdomain.com to the appropriate values. The IP_ADDRESS can be found in your welcome e-mail and also inside of your&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/website-hosting.php\">cPanel<\/a>&nbsp;account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">3) Hit save, close all your browsers. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now when you load your website from your computer, you will be able to see your site as if the DNS was pointed to our servers. You can fully stage the setup and ensure all components of your site are in working order. The rest of the world will still be loading from your actual server (since you did not change the domain\u2019s DNS).&nbsp; You can remove the line in the hosts file whenever you\u2019re done staging and your computer will reference your ISP DNS servers as usual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When customers are looking to switch hosting providers, they usually stage the setup of their web site before completely switching the DNS (domain name servers). The problem comes when some scripts require you to access the script through a valid domain name. This poses an issue because you haven\u2019t switched the domain\u2019s DNS and don\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/htech-solutions.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}