VhostsEdit - A powerful hosts file editor
Hosts file edit the way it should be
VHostsEdit is a powerful, unique management application for editing the Windows hosts file. Web developers use this method for their working environment by adding virtual domains that point to the development server, be it on the local machine or on a virtual machine.
Features
- IP management for easier hosts registration
- Virtual domains management
- Solid hosts file current records import.
- Tray application
- Portable configuration format
- Configuration and hosts file comparison for malicious changes
Why edit my hosts file anyway?
Let's say for example you have created a virtual OS on your virtualization software and this virtual machine is accesible from the IP 192.168.1.2. If you are working on many site you want to create virtual hosts in Apache. The drawback is that you cannot access each site like you would do on the world wide web by it's domain. The simple way to go is to access each site like this: http://192.168.1.2/site1.com/, http://192.168.1.2/site2.com/ and so on.
But hey, this is not an actual production simulation environment. You want to access the sites by their domains, especially if you have some mod rewrite rules. Here comes the usefullness of the hosts file. In the hosts file you assign a host name and an IP where the domain points to. So for site1 the entry would be: 192.168.1.2 devel.site1.com. Now you access the virtual host on Apache like you would normally access it on the production server: http://devel.site1.com/. That's what VHostsEdit does. Adds, edits and manages hosts file entries.
Where is the download link?
Yes, currently I'm working on a release of the software, no link yet. You can always drop a line if you are interested on the release date.