22nd May 2001
Who needs a site blocking application, when you can take a poor man's approach using a feature of Windows that many don't know about. Let's say you want to block the ability to go to www.playboy.com from your computer. First, you must locate the Hosts file on your computer. By default, Windows 9x machines have a file called C:\WINDOWS\HOSTS.SAM which is a sample file that you can work with. Rename this file to HOSTS (no extension). On Windows NT/2000 PCs, the file resides at WINNT \ SYSTEM32 \ DRIVERS \ ETC \ HOSTS. This is not a sample file, thus it needs no renaming. Open the file in your preferred text editor and notice the examples that are given. Each entry consists of an IP address and a host/domain name. Since 127.0.0.1 always refers to your own PC, you can enter sites that you'd like blocked using this IP address, which will dutifully prevent your PC from connecting to the domain using the host name. For most domains, be sure to make entries for both www.playboy.com and playboy.com, as each of these may be usable host names in your browser. Note that it is still possible to navigate to the sites using the IP address, so it's not perfect.