[thelist] domain self-hosting

[Bob Davis]

On Friday, May 4, 2001, at 12:30 PM, sarah wrote:

> I'm not hosting a domain for commercial purposes. I
> want to be able to test stuff I can set up myself on
> my computer and play around with it, but typing in an
> address like hbc349809asdfjlkjd.ne.mediaone.net isn't
> very nice.

Sounds like you are trying to set up a development environment.  Are you 
saying that you are the only one that has to be able to see it?

If that is the case, just install and configure a web server on your 
machine (the details and options differ depending on your platform) and 
point your browser to http://127.0.0.1/ (aka http://localhost/ ).  
You'll see your own server there.

For instance - on my laptop, I have Apache with PHP and MySQL running, 
so I can test and develop stuff. It's also got Perl and Python so I can 
play with them (though I do so very rarely...not a programmer).  I have 
a couple sites that reside locally for development, and I push modified 
pages up to the server where the live sites live.

Is this kind of what you are trying to do?

>  And i know I can go get
> blahblah.something.com for free, I've already done
> that, but I have a domain with no hosting service, so
> I'd like to use that, plus I'd like to know how to set
> that stuff up anyhow. It would be useful to know.

I knew nothing - and I mean *nothing* - about Apache and how to make it 
work until I started using it on my own machine. It's not that bad, and 
there are plenty of resources around to help (this list being among the 
top resources).  It's nice, because I can muck around with things that I 
would never have the opportunity to in a production environment.  Worst 
case?  I have to rebuild Apache or go to my backup http.conf file.  I'm 
learning a ton by making mistakes and asking questions.

Definitely give it a shot.  It's fun.

bob

--
bob davis
bobd at members.evolt.org