how to upload a website

[TecH_BoY]

Hi all,

I am really a newbie in web delevopment. I really need some detailed help. I have created a website using macromedia dremweaver and some editors. I wanted to upload it so that i can show to my friends from other pc's. My pc is connected to internet 24hrs. Do I have to use a personal server for it? I have tried installing PWS and i can access my site from my own pc by using this link
http://localhost/default.asp
How can i access my site from others pc? I really have no idea. Please guide me.

Note : I dunno whether i am on the correct forum. Forgive me if i am not.

[Ribeyed]

hi,
loclhost is equal to 127.0.0.1 which is a DNS loopback address. Localhost or 127.0.0.1 or your PC's local ip address (example 192.168.0.1) tells the browser not to look on the internet for a DNS server to resolve the address but to look locally. From the internet you can access your site by enterning your external ip address into the browser. The easiest way to find out your external ip address is to visit here http://www.showmyip.com/gb/.
If your PC is connected straight to your modem then this is all you have to do. If you have a router then you will need to configure a static root from your router to your PC for HTTP traffic on port 80.

Hope this helps.

[TecH_BoY]

thanx a lot,

I havent tried it yet. I am goin out now. I'll catch up with u later. In meanwhile, ur suggestion will make my site to be accessible by using, for example

http://192.168.2.228:7080/mysite/main.asp

right. If yes, can you PLEASE tell me how to make it look like

http://www.Tech_Boy.com

Is that to much :p

Thank in advance

[Ribeyed]

Hi,
no 192.168.2.228 is your local ip address this can only be accessed by local users. You need your external ip address which you can retrieve from the show my ip website. To have your URL look to your external ip address you need to contact the company which is holding your www.tech_boy.com tag i.e the company you bought the domain name from. Most domain hosts have a configuration page which you can use to redirect your domain name to point to your external address.

[TecH_BoY]

Hi thanx alot,

I dont have any domain actually. I thought just by having a pc connectet to internet u can create a domain yourself and can let others to access your site :p thanx alot for telling me. So it means that i have to buy a domain to upload my site to the internet to let people who are not in the same network with me to access my site. Am i correct? If you dont mind can you please tell me about domains, company who sell domains, how the hell the company get the domains, and any other details that a newbie like me should no.

Thanx in advance again

[Ribeyed]

Hi,
yes you can host your own site but you can't have what is called the tag for the domain name you purchase own your own PC. each country has its own regulators of domain names. In the UK its NOMINIT nominet (http://www.nominet.org.uk/). Hosts/Resellers of domain names purchase domain names from the regulators on your behalf. The domain name tag and ip address is then moved from the regulators DNS server over to the hosts DNS Server. This is then held for you until you decide to create a web site for the domain. There are thousands of companies all over the world selling domain names some are even free.
When you purchase a domain name your domain name translates into an IP address. If you host the site yourself then your computer will have a different ip address then the one that is linked to your domain name. You need to either contact the company you purchased the domain name from or use their control panel on their site to redirect users from your domain names IP to your IP address.

[TecH_BoY]

Hi pal,

Just wanna confirm that.... is there no way people can access my Site without me buying a domain? I mean, i have a ISP(INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER), and will that be enough? Where people can straight away access my site by using my external IP without a domain tag redirecting users to my external IP as you said. Sorry for asking this kind of stupid question, but i really need to know.

Thanx in advance again and again :)

[Stephen Philbin]

No name needed. Your public IP address will do just fine. I was just gonna use my IP for my server, but I couldn't resist buying my own name. :D

[TecH_BoY]

that means the URL for my site would be http://my_external_IP/my_site_folder/mysite.html is it?

[Stephen Philbin]

Correct.

EDIT: Oh wait. You do have a server installed right? You need a server to serve the users.

[TecH_BoY]

server.... u mean something like PWS and apache tomcat right?

[Stephen Philbin]

Yeah.I use Apache 2.0.52

I piecing together the whole lot (again) now actually. OpenSSL, MySQL, PHP5 and Apache2. I doubt you'll need all that though. If all you're using is just straight up html and css (which I'm assuming you are seeing as you're testing and running it on your local machine without already having a server installed) then just Apache (or Apache2) on its own will be perfectly sufficient. It's a piece of cake to install on Linux. Haven't the feintest notion how hard/easy it is to install on Windows, but I can't imagine it should be too different.

http://httpd.apache.org/

[TecH_BoY]

Hi,

The site i did is just a HTML page with some stupid Flash animations in it. It is just for testing. However i am now going to begin creating a new personal site(reason: simply or maybe will be used profesionally after i have graduated :p). Now i have two choices,
first choice is to develop a site using HTML + JSP + SERVLET (where i know how to do this)
second choice is to use HTML + VBSCRIPT + ASP (where i just starting to learn this)

What would you recomend Ribeyed, MR Herer and of cause all the other webdeveloper forumers ? Also pls give me some info and links to cool and perfect sites you know for me to refer to.

Note : I have gone trought some of the domain stuffs. And now i have understand some of the basic concept of it. It is same as what u guys have told me earlier. THANKX ALOT FOR THAT GUYS. U HAVE BEEN VERY HELPFULL.

[Stephen Philbin]

Well I can't say I know much about any of those choices you've given there, although asp is a good choice to go with. Not sure if you should be preferring asp.net over asp but no doubt PeoFoe will let you know the score with them. If you are going into that kind of stuff though, Apache alone won't cut it. You'll have to install all kinds of extra bits too. You'll have two choices then. Either manage and maintain your own fully functional server, or just rent a server from a host and let them do the techy stuff for you.

Whatever you decide to do, good luck. ;)

[Ribeyed]

Hi,
No you don't have to buy a domain name. If you don't then you can view your site my entereing your external IP address for example:

http://80.167.34.19/default.asp

[Ribeyed]

Hi,
I'm an ASP/ASP.NET, IIS(web server), SQL Server developer so obviously I would recommend this set of tools to you. I could be here all day listing the benefits of using ASP.NET but I’ll leave it to the man PeoFoe. From a developers point of view the .NET platform is the best set of tools out there for developing true cross platform OO applications not just for the Internet but also for mobile devices, B2B etc.

[TecH_BoY]

Ok.. thanks alot. I think i'll finish my ASP and VBSCRIPT lesson first before i decide.
Just wanna ask another question. Lets say i bought a domain, which will redirect the users to my external IP since i am hosting my own site. How will the URL in the address bar will look like?
Will it stay as www.my_Domain_name.com and will be extended to www.my_Domain_name.com/mylink/mysublink
or
will change to my external IP

[Stephen Philbin]

Yeah. Basically there's libraries all over the world that have records of where to find the translation of a name.

You make a request from your PC for www.whizzbang.com. This request hits the DNS (Domain Name Server) closes to you which will either hold a record of what IP address whizzbang.com should be translated into, or send you to the nearest place that knows the translation. Then once you have the IP address, you just go straight to it. Names and addresses are pretty much the two sides of the same coin. You can use either to get to where you want. We just have names because it's usually easier for humans to remember a name than a number up to 12 digits long (excluding pot numbers). So even if you do buy a name, you can still access your server by IP address. That's the usual method of connecting whilst DNS propagation is in process.

[TecH_BoY]

ehm... that means the DNS will change ALL my external IP to the Domain name i buy. So the url in my visitors address bar will be http://www.myDomainName.com and www.myDomainName.com/blabla.asp even thought the real link is http://192.168.12.34/main.asp and http://192.168.12.34/main/blabla.asp. Am I right?
But then why people uses Masked web forwarding to frame their URL to the same first page's URL? Isnt it because the URL will change to http://192.168.12.34/main/blabla.asp or something else after the visitor goes arround to some pages within the site. (i got some resouces telling thats what will happen if you host your own site without using the hosting service provided by the DNS itself) Correct me if i were wrong.

[Stephen Philbin]

Yeah. Buying your own domain name for your own use, so that it points to you will cause http://ipaddressnumber/stuff/things.html to be the same as http://www.yourdomainname.com/stuff/things.html

From this masked malarkey I've heard about, you tell the company you want your own domain name, then they buy it before you can and tell all the dns servers to point people asking for the name you wanted, to them. Then you stick your site inside a frame page with an address that they provide and would very likely give your entire site the same address. www.yourname.com for all pages for example.

I can't see any sane reason for going with this kind of deal, buy there you have it.

[TecH_BoY]

Hey... my browser cant detect my site using the external IP. I tried the http://myExternalIP/mysite.asp as u guys said, but its not working. It were detected when i used http://localhost/mysite.asp.

Originally posted by Ribeyed:
If your PC is connected straight to your modem then this is all you have to do. If you have a router then you will need to configure a static root from your router to your PC for HTTP traffic on port 80.

I think this is what i am facing. My PC is connected to router. Can u guys tell me how to detect a static IP of my pc?

[Stephen Philbin]

I'm always screwing about with mine. It depends on your router on how you sort this I think. My router uses NAT (Network Address Translation), so as far as I can make out, it uses the default gateway of the router as my public IP address, then depending on other information that comes with the request for the IP that is the routers default gateway, it translates the requested address into the local address of my server PC previously generated by the router for my PC via DHCP. (hope you're still with me here, I'm barely with me here.)

For my router, a non specific request for the ip on port 80 would probably seem very strange, but with port fowarding set up, I tell it to send requests on port 80 to my server PC and I'll deal with these wierdos when they arrive. The only trouble is that my home network isn't quite straight foward. I use two routers and a modem. As you might imagine this can make things get a bit........... wierd. My default gateway on the router my server PC is connected to (and therefore my public IP) change quite often. If my public IP is not requested, or my connection remains idle for any length of time, my public address switches to something different (a common antic of DHCP). I don't know if the same would apply to you but if it does, you can do the same thing I do. Just hit any website out there that tells you your public IP and copy and paste it into the domain manager from wherever you buy your name from.

EDIT: P.S.

I'm only guessing at how it all works from what knowledge I already have and what I have seen. If anyone would correct my blabberings then it'd be greatly appreciated.

[TecH_BoY]

Sorry for the late feedback, went outstation for 2 days.
I got some of what u are trying to say. But i cant go arround and mess up with my router settings or somethin, its bcoz i am usin a office pc where i have limited access(you know).
I am actually doin my industrial training in a online system developtment company which is situated far from my hometown(that explains the outstation thing). I am stayin in a rentet apartment while my pc is in my house(hometown). I straight away will start uploading my site once my training is over(another 2 weeks).
My house is using a Diap up connection, that means it has a static IP right. So thats it, problem solved(i think). Domain redirects user straight to my static IP :D THANKS ALOT GUYS....

[Ribeyed]

Hi,
not sure if you have solved your problem but from what you have said i don't think you have a problem o start with. let me explain myself. You said you can view your site locally but not when you use your external IP address. Are you using the same computer when you are viewing using the external ip address? If you are the i would try it via a proxy server.