Overview
This article explains how to view your site at DreamHost before pointing its DNS by using a free dreamhosters.com temporary subdomain.
Background
If you are transferring your site to DreamHost, you will eventually need to point your DNS to your DreamHost site so it loads online from your DreamHost server.
However, before you point the domain's DNS, it's important to test your site out at DreamHost to ensure it's functioning correctly. You can do this using a dreamhosters.com subdomain.
Additional options
You can refer to the following links for more information about using a hosts file or accessing a database:
- Hosts file option — See this article instead if you'd prefer to use a hosts file to view your site.
- Database — See this article if you also need to access a MySQL database before pointing DNS.
Option 1 — Uploading your site
Uploading a site is the recommended option as it works with any website. The steps below upload your website directly to the dreamhosters.com subdomain using an FTP client.
- Add your domain to the panel (example.com).
- Add a new dreamhosters.com subdomain (example.dreamhosters.com).
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Upload the website and database content to the dreamhosters.com domain.
Update any database URLs if you use a site like WordPress (described below).
- Visit the dreamhosters.com site to confirm it is functioning correctly. You can then proceed with uploading the content to your actual site (example.com) and pointing your domain's DNS records to DreamHost.
WordPress sites
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If your site is running WordPress, or contains absolute links (full URLs to your site), you must manually update those links in order for the site to function on the dreamhosters.com subdomain.
For example, if your site is example.com, all links in the database point to this URL. After uploading your website to example.dreamhosters.com, you must then update all links in the database to point to this new URL. If you do not, clicking a link will redirect you to the live website instead. See this article for instructions on how to update the URLs in a WordPress database to point to the new dreamhosters.com subdomain.
When you're ready for the site to go live, you need to update the database URLs back to the original site URL (example.com) once again.
DreamPress sites
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DreamPress sites have their own staging site you can use as a temporary domain. See this article for further information.
Option 2 — Using a Mirror
This option uses the Mirror service in the DreamHost panel to view your domain from a different URL.
This option only works with simple sites where the following are true:
- Your site is not using an SSL certificate. This is because the Mirror option is unable to authenticate an SSL certificate that's assigned to another domain name.
- Your site does not contain absolute links (full URLs to your site)
To proceed with this option:
- Add your domain to the panel (example.com).
- Add a new dreamhosters.com subdomain (example.dreamhosters.com).
- Upload the website and database content to your actual site (example.com).
- Create a Mirror on the example.dreamhosters.com subdomain that Mirrors example.com.
Waiting for the DNS to update
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It may take up to 6 hours for this newly-created mirror to update, but once it does, you'll be able to use the mirror at (example.dreamhosters.com) to view your domain at DreamHost (example.com)
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If you confirm the site looks and operates as it should, you can proceed with pointing your DNS records to DreamHost.
Do not try to visit your site at DreamHost by its IP address, as the IP address is for the server, not the website. If you visit the IP, you’ll see a Site Not Found page.