Developing Magento 2 with 3 websites/stores/domains: How to see what the sites look like when the domains are not pointed there yet?

Question

Magento 2.4.2-p1
Porto theme

I am working on a new Magento 2.4.2-p1 install. I've installed the Porto theme and I'm setting up the design. This will have a total of 3 websites/stores each with it's own domain but the domains are currently resolving somewhere else (to our old Magento production sites). How can I load the websites I'm working on without the domain resolving there so that I could see what it looks like and whether it's ready before I redirect the domains there?

Answer 1

A. If you want to set them up locally with custom urls, try this:

1. update the base urls configurations of each website so that they have each a different url;
2. setup the webserver configs to allow multiple websites (you can see an example on nginx docker container from a setup of mine here);
3. update /etc/hosts and map the websites urls to their local IPs;
4. browse the websites one by one.

B. If you don't want to change the urls at all and just make them resolve locally, then:

1. update /etc/hosts and map the url of each website to the IP of the machine where the webserver resides.
2. browse the websites one by one.

Good luck!