configuring domain name

Hi,

This is the first time I try to configure an app to a domain name and I'm having some difficulties doing it.

So I have an app running on tomcat on a linode box, and I'm accessing it like: http://41.73.145.40:8080/ (not the real adddress), and i just bought a domain name at godday: www.mydomainname.com.

In the godaddy console I was pointing www.mydomainname.com to http://41.73.145.40:8080/ and it was redirecting fine, but it kept showing the ip instead of the domain name.

I also created some default values records in the linode's dns manager.

But how am I supposed to do this? I've read some stuff about adding an entry to my /etc/hosts/ file, something like: 127.0.0.1 www.mydomainname.com

but it didnt work, could someone please help me?

thanks a lot!