Using the '.localhost' TLD searches in browsers instead of showing the site associated with the address
apache, dns, local, loopback-address, tld
Solution
`.localhost` is not an existing, delegated TLD, which is why your browser doesn't find it.
What RFC 2606 says is that `.localhost` (along with `.test`, `.invalid` and `.example`) will never be a delegated TLD, so you can safely use that name for your own, local, purposes. That is, if you want to set up a private TLD for internal use, that TLD can be safely named `.localhost` without the risk of a future collision with a globally assigned name.
Problem
According to RFC 2606 (1999) the TLD .localhost is reserved for use for testing locally. The goal is to configure a preview site to run locally using the TLD .localhost, e.g. http://example.localhost The problem is that when I use Chrome or Safari to access a '.localhost' TLD it searches google for example.localhost instead of treating it as a proper address. This is after configuring the hosts file to point back to `127.0.0.1`. Am I misunderstanding the usage of this reserved TLD? Is there a way to configure this to work properly?