Home Webserver - Domain Name?

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noneforit

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Hello

I have a static IP and have setup a home web server using Linux.

I have a domain name but I have no idea how to get this to point to my webserver instead of the holding page it points too now.

At present, if I type my external IP into a browser, it directs to my webservers main page.
What I want is to type in my domain name into the browser and have my webservers main page come up....if that makes sense :thinking:

I work in IT so am pretty technical, a link to an easy to follow guide would be ok.

Cheers

Laurie
 
You will need to setup an account with someone like dnydns. This will allow you to create a DNS record on their DNS servers which links your domain name with your public IP address.

http://www.dyndns.com/
 
Log in to your Domain Name control panel.

Find the the area where you can change the DNS records. Change the IP in the "www" record to point to your home server's IP.
 
I did this exact thing for a few years until recently when I changed to paid hosting.

You will need to login to the control panel for whoever controls your DNS.
There should already be an "A Record" that you can point towards your IP Address.

e.g.

www 143.301.202.20

you might also want to look into MX records aswell, These point to your mail servers (ignore this if you dont need this).

the only other thing that I will say is to make sure that you have it secured and locked down, you would not believe the amount attempted attacks I had within a few days of mine going online. turn off anything that you dont need (running of CGI Scripts etc...).

If you are using port forwarding on your router then great but I would also look at setting up another firewall on the host server to deny access to any other services that you dont need from outside (ssh mysql etc). this can also help to prevent various other types of attacks that will be tried.
something you could look into is setting up a DMZ, a lot of routers now are coming with this feature built in, at least if it did get compromised then you would have another layer of security before anyone can get full access to your main network.
 
Ideally your hosting company needs to change the mx record for the domain name.

Out of interest why are you doing this, unless you have sdsl its not going to be anything as near as fast. Plus it'll rip tbd arse out of your connection.
 
Its only a test domain which I use when doing webdesign so it doesnt need to be fast etc.
Saves me paying for hosting for my test sites

Cheers for your help people :)
 
neil_g said:
Ideally your hosting company needs to change the mx record for the domain name.
Click to expand...

Can't think why, as the OP wanted to set up an HTTP server, not an SMTP server. :shrug:
 
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