In new territory here and was wondering if someone could help. In the past I have had other providers host my web sites, but they usually were expensive and nice looking or free with lots of advertisements etc . But ever since learning Linux and how easy Apache is to set up as a web server. I decided to can the outsourced hosting and host it myself through my broadband service.

The question is, I now have a registered Domain name ... Now how do I point the name to my server at say static IP 216.107.217.99:8080

I am thinking that I have to register this web servers Static IP somewhere for me to be able to go to www.mywebsite.com and have it load my website off of my web server. Just not sure where... also my web site is not called www.mywebsite.com, just an example...

Thanks for your help ... DaveHere's something worth reading, although I'm not sure it answers your question: http://www.practicalpc.co.uk/webbuilding/start/hostyourownsite.htm

Edit: Here's another Google find: How do I host my own web site at home?Thanks Soybean ... Usefull Info... [smiley=thumbsup.gif]

Figured out how to get it to work.... I had to use DNS Forwarding to forward my registered domain name to my IP:port/webpage.htm at www.godaddy.com where I registered my domain name at. Then had to wait a few hours for the change to take effect. Now I can get to my web site through my domain name through forwarding to my Apache Web Server.Normally, you would just tell you domain host to point the domain at an IP address of your choosing.  You cannot point a domain at a port however; use your router to forward port 80 to port 8080 of your webserver on the LAN. Remember to tell Apache what domain it is using.

DNS forwarding isn't  quite the same; I guess that either evidence of it will appear in the URL, or HTML frames are used.  

Once your domain is pointing to your server, you can think about creating your own email server too.  

There are two main drawbacks about hosting anything over broadband, by the way: upload bandwidth and availability.

Although ADSL typically gives you download speeds of up to 2Mbps (or more), upload speeds are usually significantly less (128kbps or so).  If your website is popular or bandwidth-intensive (lots of photos/videos), all of your upstream bandwidth is going to be chewed up pretty fast, and your website users will see frequent timeouts.

As for availability, you cannot host a website or sole email service over DSL, because it is not a guaranteed permanent service.  Email servers must be available 24/7 - so although you could in theory set up your own email server (as I mentioned above), you would also need to have a backup mailserver for when your server is unavailable or overloaded.Rob ... Thanks for all the information.

I was actually thinking of putting together a mail server, but thought that maybe its best to leave it to a free source like Yahoo mail or my ISP's Mail Service VS putting together another server, but the mail and web server services can probably co-exist on the ame srver as long as I dont have a ton of traffic... I have been tempted though to learn how to put together an mail exchange server in Linux. A co-worker who took the Linux course with me over the summer set up I think it was called a Squirrel Mail exchange server, and used either Ubunto or Fedora as the Linux Disto for it.

Do you have any suggestions on if Squirrel Mail is the way to go, or if there is a BETTER one for the Linux platform?

Also, I did actually tell my domain host when I set up my DNS Forwarding my IP address:port/index.htm, so that I could have 2 web servers running, one at myipaddress:8080/index.htm and the other at myipaddress:8079/index.htm. I do have port forwarding on my router to 8080 for static IP x.x.x.101 and 8079 for static IP x.x.x.102, each using a unique port and static IP. This way I could host my 2 web servers, with 2 different domain names, and use DNS Forwarding through the same IP and direct them directly to the systems hosting the web pages and have no problems. Without adding ports to the DNS Forwarding it wouldn't work. Would come up as Page Not Found. But by pointing directly to it including the home page of index.htm, whammo, it worked!!!

I did however see what you were talking about where the URL changes to the forwarded information of instead of www.mydomainname.com to http://216.107.215.99:8080/index.htm. To get rid of this I believe I can pay an extra fee to Mask it as www.mydomainname.com . Is masking the only option to hide the actual URL info at myipaddress:port/index.htm ? :-?

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I was actually thinking of putting together a mail server, but thought that maybe its best to leave it to a free source like Yahoo mail or my ISP's Mail Service vs putting together another server

the mail and web server services can probably co-exist on the ame srver as long as I dont have a ton of traffic...

I have been tempted though to learn how to put together an mail exchange server in Linux.

A co-worker who took the Linux course with me over the summer set up I think it was called a Squirrel Mail exchange server, and used either Ubunto or Fedora as the Linux Disto for it. Do you have any suggestions on if Squirrel Mail is the way to go, or if there is a better one for the Linux platform?

Without adding ports to the DNS Forwarding it wouldn't work.

I did however see what you were talking about where the URL changes to the forwarded information of instead of www.mydomainname.com to http://216.107.215.99:8080/index.htm. To get rid of this I believe I can pay an extra fee to Mask it as www.mydomainname.com . Is masking the only option to hide the actual URL info at myipaddress:port/index.htm ? :-?