How to Block a Website in a Network

When your computer is connected to the Internet via a local network, it still loads the Internet directly instead of going through a secondary computer system. Thus, if you want to block a website on your computer while it is on a network, you will need to make modifications to your local computer. This is simple enough to do using the Windows "hosts file," which is part of the Windows operating system.

Instructions

1. Open a text editor on your computer, like Notepad, Wordpad or another text editor of your choice. If you use Windows Vista or Windows 7, right-click on the text editor program file and click "Run as Administrator" to properly carry out this process.

2. Click on the "Open" button in the "File" menu of the text editor and browse to the "C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc" folder and open the file called "hosts."

3. Add a line to the end of the hosts file in the following format: "127.0.0.1 sitetoblock.com," where "sitetoblock.com" is the site you want to block from your networked computer.

4. Save your hosts file and restart your web browser. The website that you typed in is now blocked from access.

References

• AllThingsMarked: How to Block Websites Using the Hosts File