Coding for Entrepreneurs

Local Domain & Subdomain Testing in Mac & Linux

By Justin

What to do when you want to test a domain name locally? Such as www.yourawesomeproject.com or what about a subdomain (aka wildcard domain) like blog.yourawesomeproject.com or jmitchel3.yourawesomeproject.com? Here's a quick guide to do it:
  1. Open up terminal
  2. sudo nano /etc/hosts You should see something like:
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1       localhost
  1. Add each subdomain you want to use
127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.0.1       www.yourawesomeproject.com
127.0.0.1       yourawesomeproject.com
127.0.0.1       blog.yourawesomeproject.com
  1. Run your project such as with Django:
python manage.py runserver
  1. Open your browser to:
http://www.yourawesomeproject.com:8000
or
http://blog.yourawesomeproject.com:8000
Notice that 8000 is the default port for running Django. You can change this port number as needed.
Enjoy!
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