DNS Entry that points to localhost

One of the difficulties that having sub-domains is that you need to have lots of DNS entries for them. This is particularly annoying if you want to run the site on your development machine - ie 127.0.0.1. That is why I just registered 127-0-0-1.org.uk.

If you do a DNS lookup on '127-0-0-1.org.uk' you will find that its IP address is 127.0.0.1. The DNS is wildcarded so anything.127-0-0-1.org.uk will always return 127.0.0.1. Even sub-sub-sub-domains work.

I tried to find a domain that did this - perhaps I was asking Google the wrong question. I am now a few pounds poorer but hopefully it will be useful to others. Feel free to use it if you need to.

If only it were easier to create wild card entries in /etc/hosts - or whatever voodoo Mac OS X is using this release. I still can't work easily with sub-domains with out a network connection. I know I could install a DNS server on my laptop - but should I really need to?

I currently have a fair amount of hate for sub-domains - watch this space.