How to block a website in 3 simple steps quickly?

There are many times when you would like to block a website. Maybe just to annoy your friend when he is in love with Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, etc. Or maybe you want your kid to focus on his/her studies and browse only related websites.

There are many Parental Settings types of software available in the market, but many of them are not free and even if you buy them, there are always routes by which you can figure out if your browsing experience is being blocked and believe me friends, people don’t like that!

However, what would you say if I told you that you can block a website without any parental software and any script? Your friend or kid will never know you did it because the idea is to hide the warning or password prompt when they open a website that you blocked.

So, without further chit chat, follow me through the article and find out a quick and easy way to block websites as you please and let your friends think that there is something wrong with the internet.

Procedure:

• Head over to “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc”.

• The way to this address may seem confusing when you open it step by step and that is the beauty of it.

• However, rather than going step by step, just copy and paste it in Run Command window that you can open by pressing Windows Key + R.

• When you are there, I want you to select the Hosts file. Please note that there can be two Hosts file. But you have to select the Hosts file that has no file extension.

• To verify it, Right Click on the Hosts file and if it says “File” in the Type of file field. Then you have got the right Hosts file.
• Select it and copy and paste it on your desktop for easy editing.
• Click on it and since it has no file extension Windows OS will not know how to open it. But we have to select Notepad in Open With window.

• The file will be opened via Notepad and there you will be able to see a small script via Microsoft Corp.
• Don’t get intimidated by the script because we don’t have to deal with it. We are going to add a small line to the script and our work will be done.
• Click on the very last corner of last line and press Enter so that you can type in a new line.
• Enter this small line just as it is: “127.0.0.1 (domain name of website)” (without quotes). To get a clearer view, look at the picture below.

• You can enter the top level domain name of the website that you want to block. So that all sub-pages (sub-domains) are blocked automatically.
• For multiple sites, you have to go through the same procedure.
• Add 127.0.0.1 (space) (site address) in a new line for a new website.

• You can do it for hundreds of websites.
• When you add the line, save the file by pressing Ctrl + S on your keyboard. The file will be saved with all its previous properties intact.
• Now Cut it and Paste it, in the same ETC folder from where you copied it.
• Windows will ask you to replace and you have to allow it. If it asks for administrative privileges then allow it.
• After it is done, Open it via Notepad again to check if your line is saved or not.
• To verify, just browse your blocked website.

This procedure is not limited to browser settings or firewall settings. That is why people will never be able to figure it out unless they are tech geeks themselves.

When you browse the blocked website. The page will tell you that, “Unable to connect or Page cannot be displayed”. This is same window that opens up annoyingly when the server is actually down. So, you can get away safely by saying that, ‘You can do nothing! The server must be down!’

That is it for this article. I hope this little tutorial will help you when you need to block a website. The procedure is simple once you have done it successfully and is very typical for folks who have never ever heard of it.

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