How do I redirect a URL to another URL in the hosts file, rather than redirecting an IP to a URL?

Question

How do I redirect a URL to another URL in the hosts file, rather than redirecting an IP to a URL?

Answer 1

You can't. DNS (or the host files) lets you look up IP addresses for a given host name. There is no concept of remapping URLs at this level of networking. This needs to be done in your web server configuration.

Answer 2

you can install localhost (MAMP ,LAMP ..etc) , and redirect all links to 127.0.0.1 , then create script to redirect to any website .

here's PHP example

<?php
function curPageURL() {
    $pageURL = "http://";
    if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] != "80") {
        $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].":".$_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
    } else {
        $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
    }
    return $pageURL;
}
// if pageURL is facebook , redirect to medium.com
if(curPageURL() == "http://www.facebook.com/")
    header('Location: http://www.medium.com');
?>