First Time User - Just want to host my site.

[UBigDummie]

Hey guys. Looking for some help on how to host my site. I have a P2P network with WinXP Pro (192.168.0.1) and Win2K Server (192.168.0.2). They are setup that way because I use my XP box more often and it connects the network to the Internet through satellite. I really don't have a clue what I'm doing, but I can learn pretty fast and I'm willing to do whatever it takes.

I have my site made already. I copied it over the network to the inetpup\

http://wwwroot

directory. I can't see the site from my XP box, but if I open

http://192.168.0.2

from the server, it is perfect.

Can someone guide me from beginning to end on what I need to setup on the server so I can view this site just by typing the ip in the URL of Internet Explorer? If you can even tell me where I can download a good tutorial, that would be fine.

Oh, one more thing. I don't have a static IP address. I know this is probably a large, collective, and complex issue, so if there is anyone out their kind enough to take the time and help me out, Thank You!

 

[mrwalsh1]

This will take a few postings back and forth, but here goes.

Are you running IIS on your W2K server? This is the first step.

Do you intend on hosting your site for people on the internet to access? I assume so. Does your ISP support that? And, will they do the DNS for you? Most standard ISP's do not support that because of the increased potential bandwidth - depending on how popular your site is.

You must have a static IP address and you will need a registered Domain, which someone will have to do the DNS for.

With all of that, you should consider registering a domain and have a company like Hostway.com or XO.com or possibly a cheaper one, host your site.

Domain registration starts at $15-$30/year and some sites will host your web for as little as $10/month. This means you get a YOURNAME(or whatever).COM(NET,ORG...) and not a YOURNAME@AOL.COM or YOURNAME@ATT.COM.

That's for starters!

 

[UBigDummie]

Thanks for the helpful info and your time.

IIS is installed on my server. I was messing around with the 'Default Web Site' settings. I managed to rename it and I set the IP of the site to 192.168.0.2 (same as the server IP). I tried to follow the instructions and use the DNS setup wizard also. Who knows what in the world I've got going on over there on that server.?! Can you tell I haven't had much experience with a server before? This is only my second day using it.

For the moment, all I'm really concerned with is having a server on my network that I can publish to for the sake of testing only. For instance, I created a form in my movie that requires Generator to be installed. I'd like to be able to host the site on my server, so I can sit at my client and publish it to my server and make sure it works before I publish to the web. That sounds like a bunch of rambling...I hope you can understand it.

When I get ready to server this to the Internet, my ISP allows it, but charge more. But, for myself it will probably be more efficient to have some other company host it for me when I get ready to do that, all things considered.

For now, I just want to make sure my site works before I go blabbing to my client, "Website? Sure...it's looking great!" You know?

Anyway, thanks for everything.

 

[GlenJohnson]

Register.com now has web hosting, e-mail and name purchasing. Good prices. Check them out when your ready. Another is hostway.com but I don't think you can purchase a name there. You will get 10 pop3 e-mail accounts though. Another good one. I purchased a name through register before they started hosting web sites, and moved everything to hostway. Glen A. Johnson
Johnson Computer Consulting
MCP W2K
glen@johnsoncomputers.us



"There is only one good: knowledge; and only one evil: ignorance."
Socrates (470- 399 BC); Greek philosopher.

 

[hash2001]

If you just need to resolve

http://www.whatever.com

from your XP box to your server on your own network then just add a entry to your host file.

C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Add the following line to the hosts file.

192.168.0.2

http://www.whatever.com

That should take care of it for inside your network and you won't have to mess with DNS on your Win2k server. Although in the future it would pay to learn a little about DNS. Unfortunatly the best how to's for DNS are based on BIND for linux. Search google for the linux documentation project. Then all you have to do is map the linux doc's to Win2k wizards. That isn't to hard.

As for external access to your web server from the internet I have DSL with a broad band router that supports virtual servers. That basicly means that I can share my one dynamic IP from my ISP among serveral machines and redirect single ports to different machines. To go a little further every IP supports thousands of ports that respond to different requests. I.E. port 80 is for the web, 21 for FTP, etc.. Normaly these would be on the same IP but with the router you get NAT which allows them to be on different machines. This sounds a little complex but it's easier to setup then you think. Anyways you can set the router to redirect incoming web traffic (port 80) to your web server. That gets you half way there. People on the outside can now type

http://192.x.x.x

and get to your web server. That IP would really be the dynamic IP you got from your ISP.

Of course that still leaves a problem because everytime your IP changes you would have to tell everyone what it is. Not good. That's where dynamic DNS comes in. If this is just a personal site for a few friends and testing then you can goto

http://www.dyndns.org

and register for a free entry on their DNS server. You have to end your site name with one of the their host names. I.E. yourname.homedns.org. Now you have

http://yourname.homedns.org.

Now you don't have to tell everyone your IP address, you can use the name. This entry has to be updated everytime you get a new IP from your ISP. Lucky they have a free download that runs in the background on the server a monitors your IP address from the ISP. Everytime it changes the program updates the server at

http://www.dyndns.org

with your new IP. Bingo your done and your only out the one time cost of the router vs the yearly cost of having someone host your domain. That is of course if you can live with the free dns domain name. I.E. you can't use something like dave.org or mywonderfullworld.com, etc...

Hope this helps

Mike