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How to See Your Website Content Without a Domain
How to See Your Website Content Without a Domain
Setting up a preview link for your website when the domain DNS zone is not yet propagated
Updated over a week ago

During DNS zone propagation, you will see our notification "Your domain is not pointing to our name servers". The same happens if you have recently pointed a domain to Hostinger. This is because it can take up to 24 hours for a new domain to start working globally.

Before the domain is fully activated or pointing to Hostinger, most features (website, e-mail, FTP) will not work. In the meantime, you can start building your website and see changes immediately by using one of these features:


Preview Website

A Preview domain for your website will be created automatically during the new hosting order activation. You can access it during the adding website process by selecting View my website:

The website onboarding process showing how to access the preview domain

As well as from the Preview My Website button that will appear in the Details section of your panel:

The preview website banner in hPanel

The preview website link will look like this:

domain-tld.preview-domain.com

Where domain-tld is your domain name, including the extension with a dash (-) instead of a period (.). When opening your website on the browser from the preview link, a banner will indicate so to your visitors:

The browser window where preview website is opened, showing the message: "This is a preview of a website by a customer of Hostinger"

NOTES:

  • The preview domain URL is available for 14 days after setting up your account or adding an addon domain

  • Hosting plans purchased with some payment methods may not include this functionality


Edit Hosts File

Another option is to edit your device's hosts file. All you need is to open your hosts file and add these lines:

185.185.185.185 www.domain.tld
185.185.185.185 domain.tld

Make sure to replace 185.185.185.185 with your hosting account’s IP address and domain.tld with your domain name. You can find your IP address at WebsitesManage Details, in the Website details section:

The Website details section showing the website IP address

Use a Temporary URL

A preview URL can also be obtained at any time with the SkipDNS tool using the following data:

  1. Your hosting account’s IP address: you can find it at WebsitesManage → Details, in the Website details section:

    The Website details section showing the website IP address

  2. HTTP and HTTPS ports: enter 80 as the value for both

  3. Live URL: enter your domain name

Once the preview URL has been created, click on Open and select Proceed with the proxy in the next step.

That's it! Now you know three ways to see your website while the domain is propagating 😊

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