Reviews & Comments of Virtual Hosts chrome extension

Currently broken, going to any page displays "Hmmm… can't reach this page" with ERR_INVALID_ARGUMENT as the reason.

What's not mentioned in the documentation is that this extension also works to redirect one domain to another. You can put the target domain in the VHOST IP field. So this is a nice utility to redirect example.com to dev.example.com. Perfect for my use case.

This actually works to sign into wordpress. I had tried a few other options first but this one works for me.

Great, but it works only for one website, you need to extend it guys thanks!

Has not worked in years. Use something else or edit your hosts file.

Just doesn't seem to work. Using Chrome on a Mac if that matters. To see if it was entirely broken. I can enter any IP address and it makes no difference. Nothing "breaks". I tried clearing cookies, refreshing clearing cache, quitting Chrome and reopening..

Doesnt work anymore - always says This site can’t be reached

replaces any matching text in the URL with the ip address, instead of acting as a true virtual host. Makes it impossible to use a hosting file manager (because the site URL is usually a part of the path) at the same time as troubleshooting a front end. Also, host references in code are not handled, so it's only marginally useful. basically, I still have to rely on windows hosts file.

Didn't work. Installed and the address window popped up once. After that, clicking on it only showed an empty box.

Does exactly what I want. We have a backup copy of our web server running on a host with a different name. Accessing that host directly immediately redirects back to the "real" server. This extension allows us to access the backup server and stay there. Used to do this with clumsy proxies up to now. Thumbs up!

It saved us a lot of time and hassle to achieve something so simple - loved it

Simple quick solution for site development

Just installed this, and it worked perfectly for my use case. I needed to access an old site we had just replaced, so that I could grab a single file linked from a specific page.

Only a redirect as far as I can tell.

just replaces the URL doesn't submit the HTTP_HOST request to another IP like expected

Wow! I was looking on how to view my temporary website before I point the NS and this extension solved my issue for such a long time! Appreciated this stuff!

I used this plugin to build a new wordpress site, but found that the the customize function was completely eliminated. Only a grey screen came up instead of the customize of the theme. Also it happened that when activating plugins, they would not appear in the menu. The updates also did not work. The end result was to complete the site live under a maintenance front page.

Works great. Have used many times when setting up new websites prior to transferring from previous host.

Does what's intended, but a little confusing to use. Would be great if the virtual host applied to ONLY the current tab, or the domain being visited in the current tab. Instead this applies the new hostname to every tab in your browser session, meaning if you're debugging a site and switch tabs to look up docs or read StackOverflow, your other tabs will most likely be broken. Not impossible to work around, but it's very poor for usability and adds pointless frustration to an otherwise very useful extension.

It does one job and it Works. VERY Simple! Perfect to work around Web Hosts who block access to your hosting before the DNS have been redirected. Thanks!

Easy to use and helpful for dev websites. Great alternative to mucking around with computer hosts file.

Once you figure out what to do and how to use this properly, it is an excellent time saver. Basically you enter the website you are trying to spoof and the IP address of its server into this extensions box. Then you just enter the IP address into Chrome address bar and it displays the site on the spoofed server.

Simple and works as intended. Using to run local dev server.

This seems to be performing URL replacement. That's not what the hosts file does.

This extension has some completely unexpected bugs. I have clear examples when a record in hosts lets me see desirable website, but the extension displays the default site on that IP. I just wasted like four hours of my time diagnosing my servers. And the answer has always been so close... Conclusion: DO NOT USE THIS IF YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE DOMAIN (VIRTUAL HOST) ON YOUR IP'S WEB-SERVER. This extension doesn't properly supply your web-server with required domain name; therefore, you will always get the first virtual host in the list. 2 the developer: I can give you more info if you'd like to fix the issue. I need a plugin like this. Working :) Cheers.

Great solution to test development and staging sites, or testing deployment on a new server. Makes it simple to have the TLD redirect to the new server without editing the computer hosts file.

This is perfect for testing or waiting for propagation to occur! Would be great if it could do more than one IP, but works for my needs!

A quick solution for me. Our WordPress site under development at HostGator is not accessible because of our existing (old) website. This is simple to install and configure and allows me to view either the new site being developed or the existing site by simply changing the checkbox. I wish it could handle more than one map.

Super cool, but if i could save multiple domain/ip combinations, it would be perfect

Doesn't act like a hosts file at all.

Exactly what I needed for testing a new website I'm working on before pointing the domain name at the new server. Only error is that it usually tries to add www to the beginning of the address it redirects to which doesn't work. But once you remove the www it works perfectly.

Perfect! Found I could use one of my other domains for the ip address if I'm too lazy to look it up. This is wonderful!

Love It, works perfectly. As a suggestion, would be great to have a configuration page with a list of virtual hosts that you can enable or disable indifferently. Also the option of changing headers only for a single tab would be helpful. Thanks for your great project!

Cool. I found that tool very usefull! Good point to do switching in one click.

This is not what it claims to be, it does not work like a hosts file in any way. basically you type in two urls and it substitutes one for the other. Why would I not just type in the IP address or url that works? I cannot see any use for this .

It works really well. Thanks for that!

Just works, brilliant

Super helpful, especially with the update to specify a domain as well as the IP address so that other sites aren't affected unintentionally. Now if I could just save multiple domain/IP combinations, it would be perfect!

Works fine for me. I'm testing VHost using backends on virtualbox machine and then deploy it to VDS. It is very helpfull

This saves me tons of time. I work in the web hosting industry and have to view sites whose DNS is not yet active. This saves me a ton of time messing around with hosts file entries and the subsequent caching. Great job!

Pretty good. One huge annoyance though: it changes virtual hosts for the whole browser instead of a tab. So all other websites are unusable while the vhost is activated.

very useful indeed, I'm in domain environment where the hosts file is locked down and requires that I edit it as a local admin. this extension cuts out the fluff and makes it easy to get the job done

Great utility for Chromebooks where access to the hosts file isn't available. Allows for developers to access local network domains not served by DNS, as long as you put the server IP in the address bar and vhost domain in the extension.

Instructions are not great, but you simply go to a VPS IP address then click the vhost button, put in your domain name and reload the page. Worked first time.