You don't need to change DNS to see how your site will look on Flashcloud. Edit the hosts file on your own computer to point your domain at your Flashcloud server temporarily. Only your machine sees the change, your current site keeps serving every other visitor, and you can check the migrated site in a real browser before you touch a single DNS record.
This is different from checking whether a domain is available or already registered somewhere. If you're trying to find out who currently owns a domain or where it's registered, that's a WHOIS lookup, not a hosts-file edit. The hosts-file trick is for previewing a site you're actively migrating to Flashcloud, on a domain you already control.
Find your server IP
Sign in to the portal, go to Services, and click your hosting service. The server's IP address is listed under Details on the service page. Copy it.
If your files haven't landed on Flashcloud yet, upload them first using the portal's File Manager, FTP Accounts, or Git Version Control tile.
Edit the hosts file
On Mac: open Terminal and run sudo nano /etc/hosts, then enter your password. Add a line at the bottom:
203.0.113.10 yourdomain.com
Add a second line for www.yourdomain.com if your site uses the www version. Save with Control+O, confirm with Enter, exit with Control+X. Then flush your DNS cache:
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
On Windows: open Notepad as Administrator (right-click Notepad, Run as administrator), then open C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. Add the same line at the bottom, plus a www line if needed, and save. Because Notepad is elevated, it can overwrite the file directly. Flush the cache from Command Prompt:
ipconfig /flushdns
Check the site before you commit
Visit https://yourdomain.com in a browser. You should see the Flashcloud-hosted version, not your old host. Worth checking while you're in there:
- Pages load and internal links work, including anything behind a login.
- Forms submit correctly. Some forms hardcode the old server's URL and silently fail elsewhere.
- Images, CSS, and fonts load. These can 404 if a path still points at the old domain.
- SSL loads without a warning.
Remember this preview only reflects on the machine where you edited the hosts file. Nobody else, including search engines and other devices you own, sees anything different until DNS actually changes. When you're satisfied, remove the hosts-file line (or leave it, it stops mattering once DNS points here for real) and switch DNS. If you're not sure whether to edit DNS records or nameservers, use DNS Zone Editor under your hosting service for records; the DNS tab on the domain itself only changes nameservers.
If something looks wrong before you switch
A blank page, a certificate warning, or missing assets during the preview almost always trace back to file paths, DNS records, or an incomplete upload, not a Flashcloud infrastructure issue. You can rule out infrastructure entirely by checking Checking Flashcloud system status first. If status is clear and the preview still isn't behaving, open a support ticket from the portal. It goes to a real person, and having the hosts-file preview already working makes it faster for them to see exactly what you're seeing.