Never edit your hosts file again when working on localhost

When setting up a new application on a development machine you normally need to add a hosts file entry such as dev.clientname.local to point back to your local machine e.g. http://dev.clientname.local. It’s not normally a pain though it is another thing to remember/document when getting set up a new development machine. If you have several applications as part of a solution that require host file entries then it can become cumbersome. 

I discovered that a number of good internet citizens maintain domains that loop back to 127.0.0.1 that also enable sub-domain wildcards too. This means you don’t need to set a host file entry and can simply use public DNS. I decided to become a good citizen myself so have registered and localmachine.info and localmachine.name. 

So when setting up a new site for a client you can simply use something like http://clientname.localmachine.name with the appropriate bindings rather than adding a hosts file entry.

I've put together a list of domains I've found that all loopback to 127.0.0.1 including sub-domains:

Hope you can find this useful in reducing the set up burden on new development instances and/or machines! 

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