I have a server running Apache 2 and Samba that is generally used as a development server. I set up a simple Samba configuration so I could map the network drive to my PC and access the files as such. I know I can access it though the local IP address with a browser, but some of the others in my company have trouble remembering IP addresses. On the previous server I configured, I could access it by typing in the hostname of the server, "example", into the browser and it would automatically connect to said server.

With the new development server I configured, I am unable to get it to function like that again. It may have been something in the hosts configuration file, but I've tried everything with no avail.

How would I configure my server to be accessible, locally, via the hostname in a browser without using DNS?

By adding an entry into the hosts file on your local machine. Otherwise, a host name lookup won't work, since the entry won't be in DNS. Got to have some place to associate an address with a name.

vim /etc/hosts

ipaddress servername //This map the ipadress with the server name.

The thing about /etc/hosts is that the name -> ip conversion is only avail on that machine. Every host that needs to know where your server is would need to add that to their hosts file as well.