How can I let my self not access a particular website

[The Protagonist]

my time throughout the day gets wasted in 2 major ways:

The first is digg.com. I swear that place is addicting, the other is a sub forum of a particular forum I frequent. If there is anyway I could just not be able to get on that website, so if I type the address in I get a 404? Right now going on these 2 websites is impulsive, I just go onto them without thinking, and I'm sure if I don't let me self go on for 30 days, I could TRIPLE my productivity.

thanks

p.s. I would do the self control route, but I don't have enough self discipline at this point to do that

[Chris]

Hi, I'm sure someone will shortly post with a link to some software which will help you with this (I know this exists but have not used any myself).

For now I'm going to move your post into the Technology & Technical Skills forum as I think this is a technical issue and you'll be more likely to get a useful response from there!

[ScottS]

An easy way is to make the domain point to localhost so you'll get a connection timed out error (unless you have a web server on your computer). If you're on windows, edit:

c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS
(or something similar depending on how your version of windows was installed)

with notepad and insert these two lines in it:

127.0.0.1 www.digg.com
127.0.0.1 digg.com

[The Protagonist]

Hey thanks Chris for moving it

and thanks ScottS I will try that and report back

[Scott]

Another method for Windows that works even if you access the site by IP:

From the command line, type route -p add <site's IP> mask 255.255.255.255 <unused network IP>.

To find <site's IP>, just type ping <site name>; to deduce a network IP, type ipconfig to get your IP, then you can normally add 1 to it. Even if that IP is used, it won't normally affect anything.

Example:
route -p add 64.191.203.30 mask 255.255.255.255 192.168.0.3 would prevent you from accessing digg.com if you were on a private network 192.168.0.x. (If you want to really prevent access, use 255.255.255.0 instead for the subnet mask; that will reroute all IP's on 64.191.203.x.

To remove the routing table entry, type route delete 64.191.203.30.

[Chris]

That's a good one Scott. I guess you could add a bunch of those to a .bat file with a second batch file to reverse the process - for easy enable/disable of the various websites.

.... but then I guess you don't want to make the "enable" process too easy!

[Dwane J.]

Here is a lifehacker post that gives you a couple of options:

Geek to Live: Ban time-wasting web sites - Lifehacker

Be sure and read the comments for additional ways to block sites.

[The Protagonist]

Yep ScottS's method worked and so did the Grease Monkey script from that life hacker link. Thanks very much appeciated. What I have noticed though is easing into this void is hard, because I can't access these sites it just feels as if I need something to occupy my mind

[Ramses]

Originally Posted by purplepower

Would that work for blocking one particular site for a "junior family member" ? And in such a way that it would not be obvious that I had blocked it ? ie would it look like just a technical problem or blip ?

Absolutely. And it's something that even a reasonably savvy user might not check. But you can only block websites based on addresses in this fashion, not based on content.