Trouble Setting Up a Local Domain

I am brand new to Zen Cart. This is my first time setting up a shopping cart type site, so I purchased the e-start book and am in the process of setting everything up on my local computer for testing. I am running Windows Vista Home Premium for my OS. I have made it to page 36 of the e-book and everything has worked as expected. When I go to http://localhost in my browser I get the XAMPP for windows page as shown in the book.

I am now to the point of setting up a local domain. I edited the file located at c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts adding the following lines to the end of the file:

127.0.0.1 https://www.kriegdesignstest.com # For browser access
127.0.0.1 mail.kriegdesignstest.com # For email access
127.0.0.1 kriegdesignstest.com # For mercury mail server

I also modified the file at <xampp-home>apache/conf/httpd.conf with the following value:

ServerName www.kriegdesignstest.com:80

When I go to the local domain page, it is still looking to the internet and not to my local compute. I already followed the tip on page 37 about unchecking "use proxy server for LAN". That wasn't checked.

Did I miss a step?

Thanks,
Erin

I'd strongly advise you against using your custom domain name for your local testing if you intend to use it on your actual host later as name conflicts could arise which may catch you unawares. Instead, you are advised to follow the example in the book exactly.

Alternatively, for things to work faster and without jumping through all the hoops, just type in "localhost" in your web browser instead of "www.kriegdesignstest.com" after you've started Apache and MySQL in your XAMPP Control Centre.