Going Public

Test it out

If everything has gone flawlessly, you should be able to open up a web browser and point it to your IP address. Type "localhost" (without the quotes) into your address bar. Your home page should load and look very similar to the web site hosted at your domain name. There will be a few differences- the entries for your guestbook and your blog will be the defaults for the program you use rather than your own- but it should allow you to see what your pages are going to look like after they are uploaded.

If you do get some errors, check the web sites for the program giving you the trouble. MySQL has very good documentation available on their site. PHP also has a lot of information available, but it is a little harder to navigate. Microsoft provides a full knowledge base for IIS on their website.

Accepting Visitors

If you just wanted a way to test your pages to your website before uploading them, you are all set. If, however, your goal was to host your website on your own compter, we still have a few obstacles to get around. Lucky for you, I've been there before and I know exactly how to get over them.

First, it's not very cool to tell your buddies how to get to your web page by giving them your IP address. Even worse, if you have a dynamic IP adddress, you will have to tell them what your IP address is every time they want to get there because it will change every few days. That just won't do. What we need is a domain name that can keep up with our dynamic IP.

Your best bet in this case is a dynamic DNS service like No-ip. No-ip will give you a free domain name, along with software that automatically updates your IP address with their servers if it changes. Now, you can give your friends your domain name and all they have to do is type it in and your web site will pop right up. Much cooler.

In the event that standard ports aren't available to you, there are some other options. Check with your ISP to make sure that it's ok with them for you to run a server, then look into a service that provides port redirection in addition to dynamic DNS. I used ChangeIP for some time. The Google Directory has a huge list of dynamic DNS options.

Let me be the first to congratulate you on building your web server.

 

Questions, comments, or suggestions? Contact me.

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