If you see this, please pass the word, the hosting provider is playing with the DNS settings for some reason -- n00bfest.com isn't resolving to the right IP every once in a while.

To fix this, you can't just enter the IP in the browser, because of the shared hosting system, many sites share the same IP, what tells the server what site you're looking for is the hostname you request.

So http://69.73.138.227 will not work.

As a temporary work around, edit your hosts file:
Windows: C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (no extension)

and add these lines:


Now in your browser go to n00bfest.com and you should be all set.

Even if you don't do this now because site access works fine for you, save this information, because your computer or ISP could stop caching the DNS entry for n00bfest at any time and you'd end up with the wrong IP.

This worked for me.

For those of you in Win7, you need to do the following:

Find your hosts file (for me it's C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc )
Open it, select Notepad
Paste the lines fomenta posted
Save. It'll prompt you to save it somewhere else. Choose the desktop
CHange the filename from hosts.txt back to hosts
Copy the new hosts file where the old one was. Win7 will prompt you for admin permissions.

Windows 7 just became the most pain in my butt OS ever. Just to find the folder options so that I could unhide extensions was a pain. and then chrome decided not to work anyway. Changed back to firefox and all is well. Craptacular.

GREENVAN. ♥<3<3<3

This + Balls = GOD! WTF? = ?

*completely off subject* Wow...when I looked in that hosts file, it lists all sorts of odd sites and shit...what the F*CK is that file for??

Do the weird sites have 127.0.0.1 next to them?

Yes.

127.0.0.1 = home That means that those sites redirect to your box.

http://www.topbits.com/127-0-0-1.html

Its a common way to prevent access to certain sites

Some anti web ad programs use this technique to prevent fetching ads and some program cracks do this to prevent the application from "phoning home" and trying to validate themselves.

Calls to localhost will probably fail (unless your running a local webserver) and the ad won't be displayed or the program won't realize its pirated

Oh, and the hosts file is checked before DNS resolution is done, so if there is a hosts file entry associating a host name with an IP, that IP is used and DNS resolution is skipped.

In the case that DNS is wrong (n00bfest's case) this trick can be used to fix it.

If you want to play a joke on someone, find the IP of some porn site that when you enter just the IP into the browser still works (like 216.163.137.68)

And add something like


to their hosts file

Fomenta I love you.