Not sure if this is the right place for this. I'm developing a website for my daughter's business, and testing it on the local host on my Windows XP Pro machine. I'd like to have it accessible for other machines on my home network - what settings do I need to make to achieve this?
I have all the necessary files for the website located in the root IIS folder, and accessible to the local browser with the url http://localhost/. I think it's just a case of opening up a port to the other machines on the internal network, but I'm not sure how to do this, and also I'm concerned whether this could make the network vulnerable to outside interference.
Open port 80 on your windows firewall and any other firewall software you have installed. This shouldn't cause any issues. If you have a "standard" home networking setup, you should be able to hit the site from other machines on the network by navigating to the appropriate http://<hostname>/ or http://<ip address>/, wherein <hostname> and <ip address> are the local/intranet addresses for your Windows XP server.
Thanks, that worked OK - mostly. Using the IP address it's fine, but with the host name, it actually takes me to a www url - www.<hostname>.com! A bit annoying - any ideas?
If you use the full URL, including the http:// protocol prefix, and are rerouted to a www.<hostname>.com, your WinXP machine's hostname is probably not being recognized by the the other machines on the network. Windows networking can be a bit of a pain - it's pretty flaky. But, if you only have a few machines on the network that need access, and if you're OK setting a static IP on the "server", you can add a host record [edit] to each other machine on the network that needs access [/edit]:
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