I have downloaded and installed Apache on xp home edition. My isp uses dhcp and I have a linksys wireless router to connect to the internet. So to get around this I have registered a domain name on the internet and www.mydynip.net and got a handy piece of software dynsite that should assign your ip address to the domain name periodically. this seems to work fine but I don't know what to do in apache then to get it to the point where I can open a browser and type in the domain name and see my webpage. any help is appreciated thanks

Have you configured your Linksys Router to foward port 80 to your computer?

No, I haven't done that how would you configure the router to forward port 80? Or why would you need to do that? thanks, matt

You use your router to connect to the internet. Your Windows XP computer, and Apache, sits behind the router, thus Apache webserver cannot be accessed from the outside world without the Router directing traffic to it.

Port 80 is the web port. If your Linksys is anything like mine, enter the Router's IP address into Internet Explorer, login, and look for a section called "Applications and Gaming" to forward ports.

Sounds good, so I know how to get into the router and to the port forwarding section but I have never had any experience with this, what next? it asks what application and range of ports that I would like to use, what do I do now? thank you, you've been very helpful so far if you could explain that next that would be good. thanks, matt

For application, just name it anything you want, like "Webserver." For the starting and ending port, just put 80 for both. For "Protocol", you would use TCP, but you can put both. "IP Address" is the IP address of the computer running Apache webserver. Then you check the box for "Enable" and click the "Save Settings" button.

Thanks for the info I went ahead and fixed the router then. Now I type in the domain name in the browser and I get a message that says that I am not authorized to view this page. Any ideas, is there some sort of configuration that must be done in the apache config file or must I type a password in for my domain name somewhere? might the isp be blocking port 80? any suggestions, thank for your time and help, matt

You need to edit the http-conf file (I think I got that right). It's not that complicated. Just go through and read all the commented stuff and you should be able to figure it out. You can find the http-conf in C:/Program Files/Apache Group/...something, something. Just take a look around.

There are really only a couple big things that you need to change in the file: domain name, listening port, and...I think that that's it.

Alert me after you respond otherwise I'll forget to come back.

the config file says servername what would you change that to if you have registered a free domain name that requires a password, and also then what would you change the listening port to? it just says Listen 8004 right now. Thanks, matt

The "server name" directive isn't too important. Apache might complain that what you enter for that directive doesn't resolve when you restart the Apache service, but the functionality of the web server will remain the same.

Your "Listen" config must be set to the port that you want to server to listen on, obviously. By default, this should be 80. Considering you have your port forwarding setup, and you are getting an Authorization error, I would say that the server is probably already listening on 80, so I'm not sure where you are seeing the 8004 at. Are you sure it's not a commented line? Comments in the apache config file begin with the '#' sign.

The basics that you need to setup to get the server running are the port and the Document Root. The document root is the folder on your hard-drive that will contain the majority of your HTML files. Once you get up and running, you can then start to create virtual directories. They are physical directories on your hard drive that map to virtual names in a URL. For example, you might create a virtual directory called "pics" that maps to C:\My Pictures. From the perspective of a web browser, a person wanting to see a particular pic on your server would enter http://yourdomain.com/pics/<the pic>, and the server would see the /pics in the URL and look to C:\My Pictures to grab the specified file.

The config file does a good job at describing what each directive does. It took me a day or two before I was comfortable with using Apache, and I haven't gone back.

Remember that after you change the config file, you must restart the service in order for the changes to take effect.

Good Luck!