Browser Settings - www point to local host Server

[gotchagood24]

This may be more of a web design or networking question, but since it does involve windows explorer and IE, I figured I would drop it here. What I need to do is have my local clients set up so that when a user types www in their address bar and hit enter the default site that will be reached is the local web address. They can all access the page by typing in the IP, but I want it to be easier for some of my users. I've seen it done on larger scale networks, but I don't know how to set it up. Any help would be appreciated!

[MartyMcFly]

Create a new shortcut on the desktop, (default user profile desktop for many users) to your site, and call it www. For ease, make this a hidden file.

Then open the browser and type www and the page will by magic appear.

EDIT They could just use the desktop shortcut if you leave it unhidden, but eh... doesn't look as pro

[Colonel Panic]

The problem with that is that it involves doing it on all the computers, and it can be undone. If you have control of the local DNS server then you can create a DNS (A) record that points to the server.

If you don't have a DNS server, then you are better off editing the local hosts file on each of the computers. It's a little file in the %windir%\system32 folder that you can modify in notepad (Note: Its just called hosts, it has no extension). You can add the name "www" and the IP address to this file (it already has an example in it so you can see how to format it) and it will translate the name "www" when they enter it in their browser. In fact, you can edit the file on one machine, copy it to a network share, then simply copy the file to the other machines and replace the local ones with the one in the share.