There are a number of reasons why you'd want to block a certain website from being accessed on your computer, whether it be to protect your kids from some unsavoury content or to stop your employees slaving away time on social networking sites.

Software like 'Net Nanny' allows you to control which websites can be accessed from your computer. However, it's not cheap and you might just want a quick fix for a particular bad problem.

Fortunately, you can achieve similar results with a sneaky little trick.

Here's how:

  1. Open Windows Explorer.
  2. Browse to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc where "C" stands for your hard drive.
  3. Find the file named "HOSTS".
  4. Double-click on it and from the pop-up window select "Notepad" with which to open it.Open the file in notepad.
  5. Click on "OK". A notepad window now opens with some lines of text.
  6. Look for this bit of text: "127.0.0.1 localhost"
  7. Now add this line below it: "127.0.0.2 www.name_of_the_site_to_block.com", obviously replacing the address with the one you want to block.
  8. So, if you'd like to block www.hotporn.com, the two lines of code will look like this:
    127.0.0.1 localhost
    127.0.0.2 www.hotporn.com
  9. Save the file and close it.

The site is now blocked.

If you want to block another site, just repeat the process with the next number in the 127.0.0 sequence. For example:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.2 www.hotporn.com
127.0.0.3 www.blocked_site2.com
127.0.0.4 www.blocked_site3.com

Please note: if you can't find the line "127.0.0.1 localhost" in the document mentioned above, then merely add it to the bottom of whatever code is already in there and then follow the procedures as above.