Topic: using a simple URL on a localhost

[jvezina]

Hi,

I've got Apache 2.0.51 on XP (w/ PHP, mySql, etc). Basically it just runs on my machine for my own use before publishing things out to the public host on the internet.

To access my site, I can use: http://localhost:8080, and everything works fine (except for some new software I want to use - but that's a different issue).

What I want to be able to do, is use a URL like: http://www.mymachine.com instead of localhost:8080.

Oh, I get a dynamic IP from my ISP (figured you might want to know that).

I'm assuming setting up a virtual host is the way to go (please correct me if I'm wrong).

After going through this (& other forums) I tried out various things in my httpd.conf file. None work - I always get the "page cannot be displayed" problem.

Here's the relevant info out of httpd.conf:
Listen 8080
ServerName littleGuy.mymachine.com:8080
UseCanonical Off
DocumentRoot "C:/web/sandbox"
<Directory "C:/web/sandbox">
Options Index FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
HostnameLookups Off

NameVirtualHost *

<VirtualHost localhost>
ServerName www.mymachine.com
DocumentRoot "C:/web/sandbox"
ErrorLog logs/mymachine-error.log
CustomLog logs/mymachine-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>


Again, the idea is an easy way to use a regular style URL on my personal machine (just for me) rather than localhosts:8080.

Thanks in advance for you help,
jim

[James Blond]

First you have to change the listen and the name
Listen 80
and
ServerName littleGuy.mymachine.com:80

Secondly

<Directory "C:/web/sandbox">
.....

is also needed the Virtual host container.
NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.mymachine.com
DocumentRoot "C:/web/sandbox"

<Directory "C:/web/sandbox">
Options Index FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

ErrorLog logs/mymachine-error.log
CustomLog logs/mymachine-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

If you want to acces your server by a name and not by your IP you have to a dynDNS name like yourhost.dyndsn.com
http://www.dyndns.com/

[jvezina]

Thanks James for the help. I did what you said, experimented a bit, walked away for awhile, experimented a bit more, but not quite there.

I changed the initial documentRoot to an invalid directory, and set the virtualHost documentRoot to the proper directory - just to be sure it's paying attention to the virtualHost configurations. The good news is it is when I use http://localhost:80.

It's still not recognizing http://www.mymachine.com though.

There are two things I didn't do though. The first is "Options Index FollowSymLinks". That gives me an error & apache won't start. I changed it to "Options FollowSymLinks" and apache starts & I can get to the site.

The second thing was using www.dyndns.com. I figured that'd be good if I wanted to access the site from the internet, but I only want to do it from my local machine.

Any ideas?

Thanks & great working sign.

[James Blond]

If you want to access your PC with www.mymachine.com you have to edit the hosts file in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc If you want to get access in the intranet you have to edit the hosts file on every PC.
if you changed listen to 80 (for Port 80) you can access http://localhost/ you don't need :80 in the url, cause the Port 80 is the standart Port for http.

[jvezina]

Thanks! That did it!