Hi friends,

I have two active internet domains, and rather than pay a hosting company to provide web space for these domains I would like to host them on my PC at home. They will be low traffic sites. I have a reliable 512kbps ADSL broadband connection.

1) How do I point these internet domains to my home IP address? So that when someone enters the domain in their web browser, internet DNS knows to point them to my home ip address of say 212.165.100.100?

2) Do I have to have a static IP address on my home PC? I currently use a dynamic IP service I think which translates a domain name to my IP address. Could I point the internet domain, to this dynamic domain, which is then resolved to my home IP address?

3) How do I configure IIS 5 to provide the correct local website on my PC according to the internet domain entered by the user in their web browser?

4) I have no idea what im doing I have been reading up so I could ask this question LOL basically want to host a website on my home pc I downloaded and installed Apache and I have no idea how to use it. Could someone kindly guide me how to link my registered domain name to my computer so I can host xoops. Mind you I also need to know where in apache I put my XOOPS files… im new to all of this part so any help greatly appreciated. Will gladly reward the person who spends a few hours with me to set this up I use msn messenger would be able to chat quickly on that if needed.

Hope I can host my XOOPS site on my pc :P

Thanks,

YH.

If you are running an Apache Web server on a DSL or faster link, you can become a hosting provider for other people. You can even host their domains, without needing an IP for each domain. This is called virtual hosting, and you'd be surprised at how easy it is. Remember, some access providers have rules against running hosting services, check your hosting agreement for more information.

Register a Domain
The first thing that needs to happen is you need to register a domain at Internic or Register.com. Follow the instructions at these sites (links on the right), to register your new domain. If you're creating this for a customer, you can have them register the domain or you can do it yourself.

Domain Name Service
This is probably the hardest part. If you don't host your own DNS, you'll need to contact your hosting provider to have the new domain added to the DNS server. If you're hosting your own DNS this consists of:

edit Bind or NameD or DNS to add the new domain name
point it to the IP of your virtual hosting server
restart your DNS service
Apache Configuration
Once you have the DNS pointing to your virtual domain server, you need to tell your Web server where to find the Web files for the domain. The way Apache works, if you have set up virtual domains, the first domain entered is the default. This is the directory that will be displayed when a virtual domain is not listed in the configuration. (In other words, if the DNS entry made above sends the URL to your IP, but you don't have the virtual host in your httpd.conf file.)

An Example
You have bought the domain www.adogslife.com and you want to host it at the hosting service with the IP 10.1.1.1 (which you also own).

DNS is set up to point to that IP.

Now you must edit your Apache httpd.conf file:

Go to the section of the httpd.conf file on Virtual hosting (sometimes it's in srm.conf)
Make sure that the NameVirtualHost points to your IP:NameVirtualHost 10.1.1.1
The first virtual host entry should be your default domain:
<VirtualHost 10.1.1.1>
ServerName www.defaultdomain.com
DocumentRoot /www/domain
</VirtualHost>
Then list the new domain, with any options you'd like to add:
<VirtualHost 10.1.1.1>
ServerName www.adogslife.com
DocumentRoot /www/dogslife
ErrorLog logs/adogslife.com-error_log
TransferLog logs/adogslife.com-access_log
</VirtualHost>
Note, I added two lines to the second virtual host. These allow you to separate out the Error and Transfer logs for the new domain from your default domain. If you are going to host virtual domains for other people, they will almost certainly want their server logs, and this makes it easy to provide that to them as well.


The above info i have been reading this may be helpful for others wanting to do this too