From test server to live server any advice?

[Thundarfoot]

I am curious what it would take to make my apache server live?

like www.mysite.com = what is now localhost

 

any websites explain or anything? I am sure its above my head but I would like to read/learn about it. Thank you.

 

[madmax]

I am guessing you are a home-user/enthusiast - ignore if wrong

 

You will need some external domain name if you want to make your site useful

e.g. as you showed "mysite.com"

You can purchase domains pretty cheap for a 2 year lease or you can get one free from one of the many dynamic DNS services such as dyndns or no-ip.com

 

The next problem is that to make the domain name work you need to hook it up to your external IP address. This is where the problems start as most IP addresses given to home consumers are dynamic (they change often) rather than static (permanent=higher cost)

 

If you register a domain name this *usually* means updating your current IP address DNS entry manually via a simple web control panel. It can be done but it may be a pain and if your IP changes unexpectedly you will "disappear" off the net for a while until you get it updated.

 

The domain names obtained from a dynamic DNS company such as dyndns or noip are that you can run a small bit of software on your server which automatically tells the remote DNS box when your IP address changes.

 

An indirect solution is to combine the two. Register a "posh" exterrnal name such as "i-like-apache.com" then redirect that to whatever dynamic DNS domain name you managed to register.

 

Note that the www bit is not compulsory but merely by convention and is really a subdomain on your own site. You don't have to use it (I don't).

 

If you use subdomains - that is a name-prefix in front of your domain name such as motorbikes.mydomain.com then you may need to tick a box somewhere to enable wildcard DNS

 

Make sure you get a good HARDWARE firewall, look up setting up a local class "C" TCP/IP subnet, look up how to port-forward properly on port 80 and avoid running unsecured scripting languages such as PHP unless you have read and applied all of the essential README and security warnings such as register_globals OFF. Avoid being generous to friends and letting them set up or run script languages on your server.

 

Above all, keep an eye on your logs. Get familiar with using tail -f to watch them

 

Other than that, enjoy!