Hi,

But now the question arises as to how I can edit the hosts file on the production server at Arvixe. Hmm. I'll have to check with them, I guess

No, what I've shown you is a way to do it on your dev machine without use of a DNS server. On the internet host names are resolved to ip addresses by DNS servers and you have to use real ip addresses not the loopback address 127.0.0.1 which on all computers points to itself even if tha machine has no network card at all and you can't do it with host files, that would require being able to add entries to the host files of every single computer that accesses the internet.

So you need a site with a fixed ip address ideally a dedicated ip address not shared by other sites at the host, and youneed DNS settings on a DNS server that map host names/domain names to that ip address.

I noticed in your notes about the hosts file you put the name first followed by the 127.0.0.1 but in the file on my computer it is the reverse.

Yes, I typed that incorrectly (I just now fixed in the documentation, it was shown more clearly in the screen shot), the ip address goes first. But as mentioned above you need to understand about the loopback address 127.0.0.1, then you'll get the joke on this think geek t-shirt.

Hope that helps,

Joe