Lesson In Temporary URL
Today, we're going to take a look at the temporary URL. Whether you are waiting for your domain to go live or your domain isn't working properly, you will need to use the temporary URL to access the files on your website. 
First, you should know that a temporary URL is anything but temporary, and the way you go about accessing it is different from hosting platform to hosting platform.
Let's take a look at how to do this in cPanel using the fictional hosting company BestHost. The method is basically the same in different platforms. Here's the information we'll use in our example:
Domain: summertime.com
cPanel Username: beachday
Server: funstuff4625
IP address: 172.186.295.44
If your domain isn't up and running, you will be able to access your website using either of these temporary URLs:
http://funstuff4625.hostingprovider.com/~beachday
http://172.186.295.44/~beachday
Basically, all we did here is name a server by its hostname or IP address followed by a tilde (~) and cPanel username. This brings us to the public_html folder for our account.
Looking to access a subdomain? Just keep heading down the file structure contained in your account to find the subdomain you're looking for. Example: let's say you want to view the contents of the subdomain summertime-rocks.com, and it's contained in /public_html/summertime-rocks.com, use the following URLs to access it:
http://funstuff4625.hostingprovider.com/~beachday/summertime-rocks.com
http://172.186.295.44/~beachday/summertime-rocks.com
Where ‘~beachday' brings you to the public_html file, simply add on after that logically to go through the file structure to any file you wish. Not as hard as you thought, right?
Lesson In Temporary URL: Regarding Webmail Accounts
What about your webmail accounts? Using cPanel to create email addresses creates webmail accounts to go along with them. Let's say the webmail service is on port 2186. We use a colon in the url to signify it is a port we are attempting to access, like this:
Lesson In Temporary URL: Or, you can use /webmail like this:
To log in to these URLs, use your email account information, which includes your full email address.
What if we want to access webmail using other URLs? Any domain can point to your account to access webmail, not just the primary domain. The only requirement: it has to be a domain pointed to your hosting server. Here are four additional ways to get to your webmail account using temporary URL:
http://funstuff4625.hostingprovider.com:2186
http://172.186.295.44:2186
http://funstuff4625.hostingprovider.com/webmail
http://172.186.295.44/webmail
That's a total of six unique ways to access your webmail account using both domain name and temporary URL.
Lesson In Temporary URL: Why Temporary?
Why are they called temporary URLs in the first place? It should be rather obvious that you can continue accessing your files in this way long after the domain name is activated, so why call them temporary?
The reason is simple: the only reason it is referred to as a temporary URL is that you will only need to access them in this method until your domain is active, or “temporarily.” You'll eventually be able to access your files using your domain name as usual, and won't need to go through these additional steps.
Were you curious as to the use of temporary URLs? Have you accessed your site using this method? Or, do you have further questions regarding temporary URLs? We'd love to help!
