I'm trying to find out how to host my own website. i know that i can upload my site to other hosts, but i want to be able to host it myself. is there a way i can do this such as if someone enters my IP ADDRESS in the address bar? I have DSL, so my connection is up 24/7. Thanks.

it depends on whether you have a static ip and whether you are firewalled. if you are firewalled (behind a router-firewall or something), you have to open the port on which your server is running and tell the router to forward requests to your computer. if your ip is not static, forget about it. there are certain solutions, but none of them works properly. in that case simply buy an account at www.f2s.com , it's the best hosting business out there. php, mysql and postgre, and it's the fastest and most reliable server ever.

ok. i'll be able to tell what port to use and all of that but what i need to know is how do i get the index.html to come up in someone's browser when they enter my ip address:port# Is there a program i need to get? if so, which one? Thanks.

Hello- I think what you are asking for is IIS (Internet Information Services). This is the web server for Win 2k and Win XP. To install this, simply insert your XP cd into the cd rom, click start/control panel/add remove programs. Go to the last button on the left that says add option windows components or something. Check IIS and have it install. Type in http://localhost in your browser window and it will give you information on where to put your index.html file. From there users can probably access you via your IP (unless your behind a router but it doesnt sound like it.. )basically if your modem goes directly to your computer through cat 5 cable and you don't have a firewall installed on your computer you should be alright. hth and mail me if you have problems. Thanks

first, how to let other users find your computer: ---- go to www.dyndns.org there, you can sign up for free. they will give you a url redirection. say, you ask for userid john. then they give you john.dyndns.org whenever someone tries to access john.dyndns.org, it gets redirected to your machine. ping it, and it pings your machine. do a host lookup on it, it returns your dsl's ip address. thus, if someone tries to ftp, telnet, or access your web server, it gets redirected and tries to access the ftp port, telnet port, or html port. (For your userid, you might want to pick www.john, so you get www.john.dyndns.org) second step (optional), is to download software like dynsite for windows. It's a program that checks your IP address, and if it has changed, it will notify any site on the net (ie: your dyndns.org account). Thus, if your IP changes, the second your computer logs on and notices it, your dyndns.org ip gets updated automatically. That way, you just give out your dyndns.org address, rather than your ip address, which might change and is hard to remember. --- Second, how to make your computer into a server. Basically, you just need to download a web (http) server. For unix, I've used (and really like) apache (www.apache.org). it's free, and there's alot of support/info for it. I just checked, and they have a win32 version, so you can probably install it on your machine. Just follow the instructions on how to set up the server. Once you set it up, it will listen on port 80 (or whatever) and wait for html requests. Note: Check with your ISP to see if you're allowed to host a server. Some ISP's forbid it, and you can get in trouble. I bought my computer to be a server (it's really fast and set up to be a server, actually)....but the only broadband provider in my area doesn't allow servers :(

Don't use IIS...it has alot of holes. It's the hackers favorite thing to hack. I wouldn't use it...I'm very cautious about internet security...I'm always reading up on articles about security vulnerabilities to make sure i'm safe

Sambar and Apache are two good web servers and both are very easy to set up. Apache is the most popular globally. Free downloads - find them in a search engine