How to browse your website without having to update your DNS records

So you want to create a site with Moss and check that it works, but you cannot update your DNS records at this moment… no problem!

You can browse your website using a domain name of the form <whatever>.<server.ip.address>.getmoss.site.

E.g. say the main domain name of your website is (or will be) site.com  and your server’s IP address is 10.0.0.1. The IP address-based domain name could be site.com.10.0.0.1.getmoss.site. The corresponding DNS query will resolve to IP address 10.0.0.1.

You can either use such domain name as the main domain or as a domain alias. Note that in the latter case, if you created a WordPress site with Moss using a different domain name, you must update your WordPress URI and Site URI accordingly (otherwise WordPress will redirect clients to the original domain name).

Once you’re done, you can browse your site by typing the IP address-based domain name in your browser. Later on you might rename your domain name or, in case you added an alias, you can update or delete it at will.

In case you’re curious about getmoss.site, you may take a look to our article on free wildcard DNS services.

CAVEATS

We don’t recommend that you enable Let’s Encrypt in one of these domains because the certificate issuance might fail with high likelihood, due to the limits Let’s Encrypt enforces. More info in the article we link above.