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Frequently Asked Questions

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Preview Your Website

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Last Updated: June 19, 2015 9:58 AM

You can preview what your domain's website looks like before making it visible on the Internet using your hosting account's preview feature. This is beneficial when you are setting up a website for a domain that is currently active, either in your account or with another hosting provider.

  1. Log in to your Account Manager.
  2. Click Web Hosting.
  3. Next to the hosting account you want to use, click Manage.
  4. In the Server Details section, click Show details
  5. Click Preview to display your primary domain's DNS information.
  6. If Preview DNS is not already enabled for your account, click Enable. If it has expired, click Renew.

    If Preview DNS is enabled, click Preview.

NOTE: If you preview a WordPress site, it's probably going to look like there are substantial issues with it. For more information, see Previewing Your WordPress Site.

Once your site is ready, click Make It Live to automatically update your domain name's DNS and make your site live on the Internet.

About Preview DNS

  • When you enable Preview DNS, a subdomain is created on our server that temporarily houses your website. If Preview DNS is applied to www.coolexample.com, the preview URL is www.coolexample.com.previewdns.com.
  • If you have multiple domains on your hosting account, preview them using www.coolexample.com.previewdns.com/path where path is the folder for your other domain.
  • Your domain name and hosting must be in the same account for Preview DNS to work.
  • Some features such as Flash® and JavaScript do not work with Preview DNS.
  • Any internal links in the code are translated to point to the Preview DNS site. This process ensures that all paths can be tested appropriately prior to pointing your DNS record to our hosting servers.
  • Preview DNS expires after 14 days but may be reactivated at any time by repeating these steps.