In SuiteCommerce, we are able to change the look of our website by applying different themes, extensions, and SSPs to our domain records. This is why it would be useful to have test domains available to check these changes outside of our production domain but it is sometimes impractical to procure a domain just for this reason.
Luckily there is a way to create a new domain record on NetSuite and have it registered in your local DNS without having to purchase that domain name from a domain provider. Here’s how you can do it:
- Create a new Domain Record under Commerce > Hosting > Domains > New
- Set the Domain Type to Web Store Only and use any available Domain Name
- Copy the CNAME (ALIAS) that was generated for your domain and open the Command Prompt terminal for windows and type “ping”
followed by a space and the CNAME (ALIAS) that was just copied then hit Enter
- Copy the IP address displayed on the command prompt. In this case it was 167.216.129.237. This is the IP that your CNAME record resolves to
- Access the hosts file on your windows machine at c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts using your preferred text editor
- Add an entry on the file containing the IP address that was copied in the previous step followed by a space then the domain name that was used then save the file
- Link the SuiteCommerce SSP Application to your domain and assign your preferred theme and extensions
You can now access the site on your local machine using the domain and it will display the theme and extensions that you activated on the extension activation record!