I have a client that has an existing site. Let's call it www.blah.com. Currently, www.blah.com points to their current site. We are replacing their site with a site that uses ZNode. I've tested it on my development box and it works great on my machine using localhost. I'd like to test it on their hosting environment before making the dns switch, but I am worried about the strict activation procedures.

My plan is to make an entry in my hosts file for www.blah.com. But, this means that blah.com won't work, correct? If I activate for blah.com will www.blah.com work? Is the solution for this to simply redirect all blah.com traffic to www.blah.com?

Please let me know your thoughts. In the mean time, I will suggest that our users simple add localhost.blah.com to their hosts file to test their site without activation.