# IP Address vs Domain Name
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/ip-address-vs-domain-name/162504
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [August 31, 2020, 1:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ip-address-vs-domain-name/162504 "2020-08-31T01:37:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@tech\_hutch](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tech_hutch)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2020, 1:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ip-address-vs-domain-name/162504/1 "2020-08-31T01:37:46Z")
Hello. According to [discourse/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md#domain-name), Discourse requires a domain name, and won’t work from an IP address. Why is this?
We have a domain name, but we’ve been using the raw IP address for development, for privacy reasons until the project is ready to reveal. Is there a way to make Discourse work with an IP address until everything’s ready?
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2020, 1:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ip-address-vs-domain-name/162504/2 "2020-08-31T01:56:36Z")
No, a DNS entry is required.
You can set your site to Login Required and turn off registration to prevent users from seeing the site before launch.
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### Author:  [@tech\_hutch](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tech_hutch)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2020, 2:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ip-address-vs-domain-name/162504/3 "2020-08-31T02:09:27Z")
Thanks for the reply. Do you happen to know why it’s required? Seems like a rather arbitrary restriction, from the outside.
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2020, 2:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ip-address-vs-domain-name/162504/4 "2020-08-31T02:13:25Z")
To be fair using an IP address to “hide” an online application isn’t exactly standard practice. I’ve been building medium to large multi-tenanted web services for a very long time now, nothing gets out of development on an IP.
It’s very common to build on a DNS entry and secure that address either through the product or by implementing basic auth at the web server. You could use a temporary DNS address, but with products such as Discourse that just isn’t necessary.
I’m not sure who would have pitched that as a launch/development strategy. It unnecessarily complicates any testing and eliminates portability.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2020, 3:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ip-address-vs-domain-name/162504/5 "2020-08-31T03:51:37Z")
You can always use manually entered local / internal DNS entries, there’s also “split horizon” DNS.
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### Author:  [@tech\_hutch](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tech_hutch)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2020, 2:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ip-address-vs-domain-name/162504/6 "2020-09-17T14:35:16Z")
Thanks for the replies. We decided to go with an in-house solution (not just because of the DNS stuff), but I’ll keep Discourse in mind for future projects.