How do you lock a website

Quick question. How do I lock a website address? I want to stop someone getting into a particular website.

Ideally I don't want the person to know that I have locked it.

Thanks in advance

If you mean a domain name (e.g. this.ie, that.net or theother.com etc.) then you need to register that domain name with an appropriate ISP or domain name registration company. However when you do this you will need to provide some contact details so it may be difficult to hide your identity unless you somehow do it by proxy. I think that there may also be sites/services that allow you to "book" domain names without actually registering them immediately but I don't know for sure. This Howstuffworks article might explain things better? What top level domain (e.g. .ie, .net, .com etc.) is the domain in?

Dotster offer [broken link removed] that is supposed to protect your privacy on whois searches.

Maybe Hamslicer wants to password-protect certain webpage(s) on his site?

You're right. The original query is not that clear.

Apologies lads that question is quite vague.

Here's exactly what I want to do. I want to stop a member of my family accessing Paddypower.com on my home PC.

Some parents use software to stop their kids accessing porn. Would one of these programs be any use?

If your family member can't access paddypower via the net, they could just use the phone; or another gambling website. Indeed, geffroyod (?) has posted many links where you can place free first bets!

Do you have a router? Maybe you could block the website there though I'm not sure what the error message would be. You'd probably have to block pp.ie, pp.com, pp.co.uk etc though they may all resolve to the same IP address.

On Windows 2000 or Windows XP:

Go to Start Menu -> Run and enter
notepad %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
and add the following line to the end of your hosts file:

127.0.0.1 paddypower.com www.paddypower.com

Close any open browsers, and then open a new one and try to visit any of the paddy power sites. Depending on your browser, this will give various errors or redirects.


They will probably realise at some stage that you have blocked it, since
the site will still work from other computers/net-cafés etc.

Depending on how tech-savvy they are, they may be able to reverse this.

I don't mean to pry, but if they have a gambling problem, this may not be the
best way to tackle it.

I suppose you'll want the .ie version as well:

127.0.0.1 paddypower.com www.paddypower.ie

MugsGame is right though - there's more betting sites around than you keep track of.

Maybe ham slicer is the gambler and he doesn't want he wife to know how much he's losing!

The PaddyPower .ie and .co.uk sites redirect to .com, so you shouldn't need to block them separately.