a block in the host file would affect the ping, that file should be fine. take a look at your firewall, maybe theres something strange? and while looking for the error, a quick look at the host file doesnt do any harm btw, before uninstalling the site was reachable? how did you achieve that??? without access to their site?
It should be a patch that blocked the domain. Type following in terminal. Sudo nano /etc/hosts Go to the bottom of the file and check for site domain or ip. If it's there remove the line and press cmd+x . Save and exit. If it's not there search for firewall rules. Hope this will help.
