Can't access About.com from my Macbook pro 2011 (lion then mtn lion), no matter what I try

Question

Using chrome, firefox, and safari gives me this type of warning: "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.about.com". I tried checking the host through terminal and I get a response from about.com tells me ip etc. Also about.com works fine with iphone and pc at home on the same network. Firewall is off, and not having any issues with any other sites. I had little snitch at one point and uninstalled it. I tried connecting to my Verizon Mifi and am Getting the same error. Checked /etc/hosts and I get this which is normal from what I understand:

Host Database

localhost is used to configure the loopback interface when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.

127.0.0.1 localhost

255.255.255.255 broadcasthost

::1 localhost

fe80::1%lo0 localhost

I even tried upgrading to Mountain lion and it didn't fix the issue. I'm not doing any sort of development on the machine so I have no idea what could be causing it. Any ideas?

Edit: Someone suggested it might be peer guardian blocking the site. I haven't turned it on in months, but I guess it might still be running something in the background. Will have to check later when I get home. Anyone have such an issue with peerguardian not being on and causing sites not to load?

Answer 1

The new version of Mac OS X (Mountain Lion) has disabled the ability to use localhost. I was looking for the same thing—my development page wasn't working and I started to worry. Turns out its Apple's way to get you to pay another 19.99 for OS X server. Do a quick Google search, there are a few sites out there that explain how to force it back on, since Apache is still built in.