How to enable faster DNS resolution to load your site quicker on MacOS

This will aid users who have opened up 000webhost hosting accounts and pointed their domain or used a CNAME record to use this own custom yoursite.com domain; your ISP won’t always have the latest information to load your new hosting straight away so this can help you!

You’ll want to hit the Apple icon then System Preferences then Network

Now this window should appear and you should click “Advanced”

Now hit on DNS and you’ll see this page below

Simply type 8.8.8.8, hit return and type 8.8.4.4 and again return now hit ok.

Now you can see DNS server 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 should appear below, click “Apply” to make the changes.

Open up “Utilities” then hit “Terminal”

You’ll want to type dscacheutil -flushcache exactly like pictured then hit return.

Everything should load a little faster now and also your domain should load your 000webhost content with no issues.

You should always clear your data/history/cache when changing hosts or modifying anything DNS related; even changing your files via FTP and visiting your site and seeing the changes haven’t taken place can be solved by clearing your local computer cache which keeps copies of your sites because it doesn’t expect them to change that often.
A little unfortunate if you are building a website live :slight_smile:

Simply clear all the data depending on your browser.

Depending on what version of macOS yo are running you may have to slightly change the command above.

Here are some alternative commands to try depending on your version of macOS :slight_smile:

OS X 10.4 (Tiger) lookupd -flushcache

OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard) dscacheutil -flushcache

OS X 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

OS X 10.10 (Yosemite)
Versions 10.10.1, 10.10.2, 10.10.3

OS X 10.10.4+

OS X 10.11.0 sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

OS X Sierra 10.12.0 sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

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A few of you might find this useful when migrating.