Forum Moderators: mack
I am about to start setting up my first Apache server - just for experimentation at home. I have a book and I am on Chapter 1.
At home I have a router, which presents as one external IP address and 3 PCs, which have internal IP addresses. My OS is Win XP Pro.
At this stage I do not want to connect the server to the outside world, I just want to play and perhaps browse the new server from the other local PCs. So, my question is what answers do I give to the following basic Apache setup questions:
1. Network domain? (I have not yet purchased a domain name, so what do I put here?)
2. Server name? (I believe I can just use localhost, or 127.0.0.1?) But, if I use that I guess I would not be able to browse the server from the other two local PC's?
Any advice much appreciated. Oh, and please make it idiot proof! Thanks in advance.
Paul
Running a network server can be a great learning experience.
Just make sure you do not yet open the router to the outside world. You might want to check that port 80 (http) is closed to prevent anyone being able to access your server from the outside.
With regards to Network domain. If you have a domain name you can use this. If not you might want to give it a name such as "homenet"
The network domain is used to allow computers to recognise each other on the same network.
If you have already set up windows as a network client you might want to use the same name as windows issues your systems. I believe this is usually "MShome"
As for Server name...
For this you could simply use "server" if this is to do your network server.
When you have apache fully installed you should them be able to access any of your network pc's and type in [ip.add.ress.of.server...] and it should take you to the servers pages.
We can make it simpler though....
You can use the windows host file to allow you to connect to the LAN server using a name.
Open your host file and type the following.
[server...] ip.address.of.server
Save and close the host file
Then when you enter [server...] on the system where you altered the host file the server will be displayed.
The is will only work on pc's where you altered the host file.
Mack.
