Even though this isn’t directly related to blogging or running a website, it is needed to have a well running PC. After all if you can’t use your PC because it’s bogged down with bloatware, malware, adbots, or any other dang thing out there, you very well can’t do any website work.

What is a Hosts File?

A hosts file contains mappings of IP addresses to Host Names, and can block any access from a host name you specify. I’m not exactly sure how it works, but last night I found out that it does in fact work. For the past few days I have been trying to get GoogleAds to show up on one of my pages here at SharkFOO. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out why the ads were not showing, I had put the html code in correctly into my site files, but no dice. It was even showing up correctly when I did a View Source from inside FireFox. Then I remembered I had a hosts file that I had installed a year or so ago on my pc. I opened up the hosts file, boom bam, commented out the GoogleAds entry and voila!, they were showing up now.

That’s the thing with hosts files, sometimes ads you might want to see will be blocked by the hosts file, but I’m not too worried about google trying to install a virus on my PC.

Where to Get a Hosts File.

If you’d like to learn more about hosts files, where to get it and how to use it, check out mvps.org. Personally I’m using the HostsXpert program, its quite nice, and has an hosts file update feature in the program.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • e-mail
  • Propeller
  • Reddit

Some Random Articles

More Links