Server Guru's

DerekAustin26

Okay, Lets say I have a Server at my house.

I wrote up a program and I want to make this go live for the whole world to view like "myspace", "google" whatever etc..

How would I make this program available to the public like any other viewable public website that anyone else can view?

Anyone explain this in lamens terms?

DerekAustin26

Basically HOST my OWN Web Server/Domain. Not create my own website using yahoo,google,geocities, or tripod.com. I'm talkin about Hosting/Administering my very own server and publicizing my own website. How would I make the "program" i wrote published and publicized?

dynamik

Just get a static IP from your ISP and add a DNS record for it somewhere. Some domain registrars do this, and your ISP might as well. A lot will require you to get a business account for this. If you only get a dynamically assigned IP address, you can look into a dynamic DNS service as well.

DerekAustin26

So I would need a commercial line installed as well right?

flurrball

No, you could probably do it with a personal line. You need to talk to your ISP about that one, though, to find out.

As far as the program publicizing to a website, I'm guessing you are talking about a program on your computer filling data on a website? If you are hosting it all on your computer anyway, you can have your website on there, too. Look into something like WAMP (Install PHP 5 Apache MySQL on Windows : WampServer) that will install Apache, MySQL, and PHP all in one bundle. I'm not sure how secure these bundles are however, since I've only used them for personal use, but you will probably need to make some port forward entries in your firewall to allow external traffic onto your site.

Then, you can just maintain your site inside your wwwroot folder, and whatever program you have could interact with those pages, or the database via scripting, or whatever solution you need.

DerekAustin26

Well only reason I'm asking this is because I just wanted to get an understanding for how Websites are created. I know there are programmers that write these html/java/c+ programs, but never understood exactly HOW they Host/publicize and make these programs available to the public for use, just like any other website.

dynamik

They just use a server-side programming language, such as PHP, ASP.NET, etc. to interact with a database, such as MySQL, SQL Server, etc. and output HTML. That's how these forums work as well.

dfosbenner

You're asking several questions here. First is about hosting your own website. You'd need to register a domain name, eg www.<whatever>.com, or .org, etc. As was mentioned, you'd request a static IP address from your ISP, and you'd need your ISP or perhaps the domain name provider eg Network Solutions) to add your domain name and IP address to their DNS server. This allows web users to get directed to your server when they enter your domain name in your browser.

Next, your server needs to be running web server software to host your website, so you could use Microsoft's IIS for example, or a variety of other things out there.

OK, so now you have a webserver, a website, and a connection to the internet so everyone can connect to you. So how do people find out about you? Google, Yahoo, & other search engines have ways to enter information about your website into their system (as opposed to waiting for them to find you). There's also various techniques to improve your ranking on search engines so you come up closer to the top. Advertising on websites is another possibility. Using this forum as an example, to the left of this page are some small advertisements for training-related materials. Depending on what the program does that you want to make available to the world, there's probably websites that people visit who would have an interest in such a program. That would be a place to start. Also posting messages with links on forums.

If your program is good, you'll benefit from word of mouth, and people emailing it to others.