My own website says Website Temporarily Unavailable

There is no reason to be modifying your hosts data for this case.

I'd remove entries added there, and would revert to the default contents.

I'd also flush the cache or reboot, as I've sometimes had issues getting the contents of the hosts file reloaded, depending on the particular version of macOS involved.

Using hosts for this will mean you're back in the data every time the IP address changes. Which basically means you're going to get to discover anew why DNS was invented, if you should follow this path.

Your server IP address is already public information.

You'll need to use a text editor at the command line or one of a very few GUI editors, as the usual GUI editors will corrupt the hosts file content.

BDAqua: Accessing the host via IP address only works if the IP address is set up in the web server as an alias for the web site. The IP address will be entered into the web browser, that string will be passed to the web server via the HTTP or HTTPS connection, and that string will be used to select the web site for viewing. If there's no 46.66.65.192, you'll get whatever the web server is configured to use with no matching site. If you enter www.greenearthphotography.com or greenearthphotography.com into the web browser, then that text string will be passed along to the web server, and the web server will look for sites in its configuration, and one or both of those strings will cause the web server to render the web site that's been configured on the web server.

As for the IP address being secret? It's not. To translate from the domain name to the IP address, you can use a command line tool such as dig, or can use the Network Utility.app tool—⌘␠ (command space)—to launch Spotlight, enter Network Utility there to launch the tool. (The location of Network Utility has moved around over the years, and Spotlight is the easiest way to find and launch it irrespective of the macOS version in use.) Network Utility provides access to commands to view various sorts of network information, including the ability to translate a host name to an IP address, and to trace the route to the specified server.

Flush your DNS cache, and try your browser access again. As you're on OS X 10.13 or later, you can use the following Terminal.app command to flush your network caches:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

This command is benign, though it'll initially slow down some subsequent network accesses, until the DNS translations are re-retrieved and re-cached.

You'll have to use an admin password for the sudo.

Why? The web server is told which web site to display based on information accessed from and routed to and then sent over from your web browser client. If your local system has cached an old DNS entry or—as was mentioned earlier—the hosts file was modified, then the wrong IP address can be targeted or—and this detail is not applicable in this case, though this is how virtual hosting is implemented on the web server—the wrong host name can be sent over from the web client to the web server.

The Time To Live (TTL) for your DNS entry from your DNS provider is set to 19332, which means that translations will usually be maintained in a local cache for roughly five hours.

Another possibility here is that the Mac is using a different DNS provider than the other devices you're testing with, and the DNS provider that the Mac is using has not updated its translation caches.

When moving a web site around, it's common to lower the TTL values leading up to a server or address or network migration, and to then increase the values after the migration. This increases the load on the DNS servers and slows access traffic, but it makes for a quicker change-over when the new translations are available. Some folks will go as far as gradually lowering the TTL. Returning the TTL to a larger value after the network transition has completed speeds frequent user access, as the DNS translations can be cached for longer.

Your “published” IP address in public DNS is the address that we are citing.

The IP address you are encountering is coming from a different source; from a local or ISP DNS server cache, or from the hosts file.

I suspect it is the published, public DNS translation that’s correct, and there’s somethung specific to thr Mac that’s either been cached, or that’s been manually configured with a different address.

Ahain, you will beed tomenter the IP address into the web server configuration, or you’ll get a default site. If you’re using shared web hosting here, you likely won’t be able to add the IP address, as there are routinely dozens or hundreds of web sites sharing the same IP address. I would doubt you’re running your own web server or running a private (hosted) server, but—if you are—then you can add the IP address and then will be able to accrss the site via the IP address.

Sources for the “wrong” (misconfigured, stale) IP address are the local hosts file, and the DNS server that has been specified in your System Preferences > Network setup, or thr DNS server address that’s being issued by your DHCP server, or maybe (though unlikely) the address is arriving via another network component.

As a test of the DNS server, set your System Preferences > Network DNS server for your network link to the IP address 9.9.9.9 (Quad9 DNS), or to 8.8.8.8 ( Google DNS) or to 1.1.1.1 (cloudflare DNS), flush your DNS cache, and see if you are now getting the correct translation. This assuming you’re not modifying the hosts file, or have reverted the hosts file.

181.224.137.192 gets me the same page as the other IP, I got the other IP by using Network Utility>Lookup, but using that for 181.224.137.192, I get...

Lookup has started…

181.224.137.192 -> ip-181-224-137-192.siteground.com

The only reason to be in hosts is if you want to direct, redirect or misdirect domain names to IP addresses, without using DNS.

The hosts file is a hand-maintained, unsynchronized, manual means of getting from a name to an address.

So too is DNS. Though DNS is automatically updated across all hosts either using the same local DNS server pool, or all hosts using public DNS.

You’re getting in trouble here because you’re overriding DNS, with stale translarions in your hosts dile.

You can either keep manintaining these entries as the hosts chane IP addresses and on each system that needs these translations, or you can use a local DNS server pool or—for public hosts and addresses—the public DNS system.

If you are on a shared hosting plan from whoever is hosting your site then you likely are assigned a dynamic IP Address for your site. Your issue was with a modified hosts file. Further issues related to IP Address assignment or DNS for your site are issues that need to be discussed with your hosting provider.

BobTheFisherman, I restored hosts to its original file removing the IP addresses and I can still see my website. Btw, SiteGround hosts my site and its registered with GoDaddy, whose DNS points to SiteGround. I think it's a shared hosting plan and a public DNS? Anywho, I really appreciate your help and I'm so glad this has been solved.

I suggested you restore your hosts file and you did that to solve the

issue you were having. You are now discussing another issue regarding

accessing your site by IP Address. As I said, you are on a shared

hosting plan and as such you share an IP Address with multiple sites and

that IP Address can change at any time. To get a dedicated IP Address

you will have to discuss that with your hosting company. They likely

will charge you more for a dedicated IP Address.

As a test, you can also try accessing the site while booted into another admin user account.