How to create a fake hostname in windows?

I was reading a book and it said that I can setup a fake hostname in windows by changing the file hosts present in C:/Windows/System32/Drivers/etc/ but it didn't say how to do it.

I mean like directs me to my wamp home folder www I want to type and let the browser directs me to a specific folder.

Does anyone has an idea how to do this ?

2 Answers

You can't route web address to any folder on windows, http is a web protocol and must have a web server listening on other end. What you can do is to set up virtual host in Apache, preferably a subdomain, and make folder you want to be accessible from the web a DocumentRoot of that host. So:

In host file set

127.0.0.1 myfolder.localhost

and add these lines to httpd.conf, Apache configuration file (or extra/httpd-vhosts.conf, make sure it's being included by main httpd.conf)

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1> DocumentRoot "C:/webroot" ServerName localhost <Directory "C:/webroot"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews +Includes AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1> DocumentRoot "D:/myfolder" ServerName myfolder.localhost ErrorLog "D:/myfolder/logs/error.log" # if you want separate logs for this folder CustomLog "D:/myfolder/logs/access.log" combined <Directory "D:/myfolder"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews +Includes AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

You must also setup regular webroot for localhost as shown above, otherwise it won't be accessible anymore.

Another (simpler) option to access different folder would be to create in your webroot a hard-like-link to other folder using junction program from Microsoft.

open the hosts file within C:/Windows/System32/Drivers/etc/ in notepad.

add an entry like this

127.0.0.1 localhost
10.11.100.100 someotherserver

now you can resolve to 10.11.100.100