Hosting your own website with DNS2Go

Scenario time. You want to get a personal website up and running on your computer, but do not have an Operating System that can contain IIS.

Solution time: XAMPP. XAMPP is a great all in one solution for the smallest of websites created in pure HTML all the way up to an online ordering system with PHP and mySQL all in one. XAMPP also contains an FTP Client for uploading / downloading remote files. What else would one need for setting up a server (Besides DNS2Go)?

This blog post is going to be centered on installing XAMPP and setting up a basic HTML site. First lets discuss what XAMPP is and what it has to offer:

Multi-Platform
Apache HTTP Server
MySQL
PHP
Perl

Apache HTTP Server - This is the core WebServer with XAMPP. This is what XAMPP uses to display the pages you have created. Apache itself has been the most popular WebServer on the Internet since 1996.

MySQL - This is the Database Management System that XAMPP utilizes. You may NOT know it. But many sites that you may visit online (Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr) all utilize MySQL! Its very scalable and is closely tied with PHP.

PHP - This is a popular web scripting language designed for dynamic websites. Sites like Digg, Facebook, Youtube and Yahoo all utilize PHP coding.

Perl - Perl is a very old yet still widely used programming language originally developed by a systems administrator of NASA in 1987. Many high-traffic websites use Perl extensively including Amazon.com, bbc.co.uk, Craigslist and Zappos.com.

So now we know what XAMPP stands for. But how easy is it to setup?

Once you download the installation file from here double click on the file and you will be presented with the beginning of the installation.

You will first need to specify a directory to install everything into. The default install location is c:\.

After everything is installed you will see a configuration screen allowing you to start / stop the components of XAMPP



From here you can start / stop any services you wish. Again the key to starting your own site is making sure Apache is started.

Now from here on out, we will assume you installed XAMPP to the default C:\XAMPP directory.

Now if you open up your WebBrowser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer) you can navigate to http://127.0.0.1. By default a generic webpage will come up touting all the features of XAMPP and links that provide more information.

Once this page comes up your free and clear to create your own site. Any HTML files you create will need to be saved into the c:\XAMP\HTDOCS directory.

Also be sure to verify any and all ports are opened in your router. For an overview on how to do this, check out this previous blog post

Now to use your new webpage with DNS2Go is very easy. Once you verify that the ports in the router are setup correctly. Open your Web Browser and enter in http://yourdomain.d2g.com and you should see your site!

Good luck and have fun!