Block Websites without any software

This method uses window's hosts file. HOSTS file to maintain a personal list of web addresses. Any time a request is made for a URL, the HOSTS file will be checked first. If a corresponding address is found you will be directed to that IP without first consulting a DNS Server. The original intent of this file was to define where sites exist; we will use it in this context to define where they don’t exist.

Lets first look at a HOSTS file entry

127.0.0.1 localhost

This is the loopback address for your machine for those cases where an application needs to reference the local machine by IP address- the loopback address will always be valid. This entry should never be changed.

Now lets add an entry to block

127.0.0.1 www.yahoo.com

We are telling our local machine that Yahoo actually exists on the local machine. Any request for www.yahoo.com will be directed to the local machine and therefore effectively blocked. You could also use the IP of another website if you wanted to be creative.

Let’s take a closer look at a URL http://www.yahoo.com

* http:// defines the transfer protocol in this case Hyper Text Transport Protocol; this is the standard for viewing websites. Another common protocol is ftp:// for file transfer.
* www is the host
* yahoo.com is the domain
* .com is further classified as the TLD (Top Level Domain)

A HOSTS file entry will disregard the transfer protocol so it isn’t needed. However, the host does play an important role. A webmaster may choose to define a host for his/her website. “WWW” has become the universal standard for the default host. It is just as common to define a site with no host as well. This means that as far as DNS goes www.yahoo.com & yahoo.com are two totally different sites, even though they resolve to the same place. Because of this to effectively block the site, you must also block all hosts. This would usually mean:

127.0.0.1 yahoo.com

127.0.0.1 www.yahoo.com

Now if you want to redirect yahoo.com to any other website then in place of 127.0.0.1 you just have to put the ip address of the site to which you want to redirect. For example

209.85.231.104 yahoo.com

209.85.231.104 corresponds to google.com. Now whenever someone tries to go to yahoo.com he will be redirected to google.com.

Now question arises how to get the ip address of the website. Thats simple - Open Command prompt and type ping "your site (google.com for me)" and hit enter and you will get the ip address.


This method is simple and working for IE and Firefox. IE also has a feature called CONTENT ADVISOR.