Can you get it on the European mirror?
http://distrowatch.gdsw.at/

I just tried and YES the website comes up using http://distrowatch.gdsw.at with the .at (Austria) suffix! Does anyone on this forum know why this is yet I can't bring up www.distrowatch.com? This is very strange. Any explanations would be appreciated, technical or otherwise. Thanks.

It is not clear if it IS your system, so I'd stop messing around wrt: editing files blindly.

Try and
from your location using terminal and post the output.

http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/distrowatch.com.html

I have learned after more than 25 years of working in the I.T. field and using PCs for nearly 30 years that solving computer, programming and networking problems is like working on a car: it's a process of elimination. The output you requested is as follows:

rick@Beltz-Family ~ $ traceroute distrowatch.com
traceroute to distrowatch.com (66.180.174.35), 64 hops max
1 192.168.1.254 (192.168.1.254) 1.382ms 1.479ms 0.905ms
2 162.197.64.2 (162.197.64.2) 24.227ms 20.327ms 20.386ms
3 * * *
4 * * *
5 12.83.72.9 (12.83.72.9) 19.925ms 23.390ms 19.855ms
6 12.122.99.89 (12.122.99.89) 33.210ms 32.955ms 35.560ms
7 12.87.215.42 (12.87.215.42) 36.850ms 36.430ms 36.722ms
8 66.180.174.35 (66.180.174.35) 37.408ms 36.888ms 36.666ms
rick@Beltz-Family ~ $ telnet 66.180.174.35 80
Trying 66.180.174.35...
Connected to 66.180.174.35.
Escape character is '^]'.
Connection closed by foreign host.