Vps – the importance of the Hostname when setting up a VPS

Your hostname is the name of your computer.

Your fully qualified domain name is your hostname plus the domain your company uses often ending in .local.

So if the name of your computer is bob, and your company's domain is contoso.local, your computer's fully qualified domain name (FQDN) is bob.contoso.local.:

• Hostname: bob
• Domain: contoso.com
• FQDN: bob.contoso.com.

In the case of a domain like contoso.local I did not use an "external" internet domain name. This name doesn't have to be the only way that you address the server.
If you make it available by its IP address you can use DNS or that IP address to allow external users to access it.
The dot at the end of the FQDN is used to indicate the empty top-level domain.

Some more information on DNS:

• http://www.howstuffworks.com/dns.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_qualified_domain_name

Edit: Thanks for the comment on .local domains RobM

1. Yes, you can give any hostname in /etc/hosts - this name will be known only to hosts and you.
2. Yes, you can configure this way and have sites with unrelated to hostname names - most shared hosting do the same thing
3. It doesn't affect nobody except outgoing mail from your VPS to this "intercepted" hostname (it it'll happen) - instead of sending to external Net it will be routed locally
4. Yes, you can. Edit /etc/hosts and service network restart do all magic