Hi guys, I'm a newbie at webserver stuff...

Just found out about apache and webserver 2 days ago actually... and I finally succeeded in installing apache and php.

Now I wanna make my computer available online, how do i do that?

I thought it was just http://mycomputerIPaddress:80 ?

Or do i need to do something else in the config file?

Thanks for the help.

Hi penguin.

When you say "online" are you talking about being able to have this on your private intranet or to the public internet?

If you want it to the internet, is this server hooked up to a public static IP address?

If you just want to test on your machine, you can just type "http://localhost".
In fact this is a good test to make sure that your apache is set up properly before you go "online"

BTW - the port number is redundant as http tells it to go to port 80. Most modern web browsers would assume port 80, even without the http.

Anyway, if you give more information, I am sure that the people in this forum will be able to give you advice.

Hey dsmith,

When i said 'online' i meant public internet. I have already tried http://localhost and thats working fine. Now i want others to be able to view my page from the public internet.

And .. what do u mean whether the server is hooked up to a public static IP address? How do I check?

Hi Penguin.

If you don't know if you have a static public IP address, chances are good that you probably don't.

How do you connect to the internet? DSL, dial-up, etc?

If it is DSL (home user DSL), they probably use dynamic IP address assignment through DHCP. This is much easier for the ISP and doesn't matter to the end server unless you want to accept incoming traffic. Once you can verify how you connect, then you may be able to talk to your ISP about giving you a static address. They may charge you for this and you will have to program your router (or they will - once again with a charge.)

If you are on dialup, forget about it. It just won't work.

Once you are sure that you have a static IP, you will want to register a domain name. Your ISP may offer this service as well.

Finally, if you are going to put a server on line, you really will want to make sure that it is secure. The number one thing that you want to do is shut down any ports that you don't need (incoming esp.)

If you just want to get some pages online you may want to consider just using a web hosting service. They do alot of this dirty work for you and all you do is create your content and upload it onto their server. There are pages in these forums that list offers like this.

Whatever you do, good luck!