How To Make Your Own Free Home Based Web Site. These instructions are for windows based computers but most of the concepts applies to other operating systems.
Of course you will need internet access. Either cable or DSL preferred.
You need to have a Routable IP address put directly onto the nic card of your computer or, forward port 80 to an
Ethernet card with a static IP address. A routable IP address is supplied by your ISP.
A router will consume the public IP Address and then issue private (non public) IP Addresses for building an internal network of computers.
Either A router can be used or a server using DHCP on the internal network would
work.
DHCP is used with your service provider (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) for their public network and DHCP can be used on private networks when using a server or a router. When using a router a good way to begin is to make sure the Nic card you are using has the DMZ open to allow all port traffic to your computer. DMZ is a setting on routers often called Demilitarized zone. An internal DHCP Server is not necessary for building a web site. Later you can turn off the router DMZ Feature and use port forwarding. (More Router Settings).
If you do not have a router and your pc is connected directly to your modem then your public IP is
already on your Ethernet card.
An External DNS Service is necessary for Domain Name Resolution over the internet. First you must order and register a Domain Name through one of several DNS registrars. They utilize a search box you can use to search available names until you find one that has not been used yet. No duplicate Internet Domain Names are allowed on the internet. There are Windows Domain names but those are different from Internet Domain names. Once you get an Internet Domain Name this will allow others to type your Domain Name into thier address bar instead of having to type your IP Address. Ip addresses are hard to remember and they often change and that is what makes it preferable to use a registered domain name. Domain names can be registered for a period of 1 to 5 years at a cost of 10.00 to 50.00 dollars per year.
DYNDNS.COM also has a Free DNS service but you have to use one of their names. Most DNS providers have a browser based
menu to make changes, alterations, such as adding MX records for Email and SIP records for Sip based phones. DYNDNS.COM also has a Free DNS Service for people who
already have Static or Dynamic IP address. Static IP Addresses never change and are less troublesome than Dynamic IP Address when used with a website. When using the Free DNS Service You have to choose from a variety of Domain prefixes such as yourname.gotdns.com. A link to DYNDNS.COM Free DNS service is here.
Free Website Fundamentals They have
helpful explanations and support.
If you are using a Dynamic IP it would be useful to take advantage of a DNS client service. If the external IP address changes as it often does with a Dynamic IP, your Domain name will no longer resolve to the old IP address listed in the DNS service. By using a DNS client you won't have to manually change the IP in the DNS service
menu. A Dynamic Client service is free. The client installs on your pc, checks for your IP address, and automatically reports any changes to the DNS service.
Good News! DYNDNS.COM now has a Free stable DNS client. If your router has support forDNS Services than it may well be unnecessary to use a client installed on your computer.
If you use Dyndns.com and register a Domain name and use thier Free DNS service it will take around 3 to 4 days to work and you will get an email that states your service is activated.
Remember never to use the same Domain name on 2 or more DNS services because the domain name will never resolve. This could be another possible source for Exchange Server failures.
I have included a screenshot demo showing how to set router and
Ethernet card(nic card) for a basic scenario.
Screenshot Demo
You can test your site by typing in the local host on your pc 127.0.0.1. You should see the Under Construction Page if you have Windows IIS installed and running. You can also test by using another computer to see if it works. Windows Server and XP both work except windows XP will only allow up to 10 simultaneous connections.
Once you have a external DNS service you also will be able to type your Domain Name into Windows Remote Desktop from a remote location and login.
Remote Desktop automatically uses another port to resolve to your Domain (3389) The port can be changed also. Your FTP site should also be (Port 21)
accessible. Make sure Windows Firewall is turned on and allow port 80 in the Windows Firewall Exceptions. Do not forget to enable sharing permissions on your root drive. Go to C: drive, click on sharing, Advanced sharing, Check the share this folder checkbox. Click the permissions box, then click the add button, then advanced, then the find now button, select iis_users, remote desktop users and any others you might need. Click ok. Select the permission level for your users in the allow checkbox. Click ok, ok again, Go to the security checkbox and repeat the steps just used for enabling sharing permissions on your root drive.
With Windows IIS Server called IIS6 and IIS7 you can create and edit your website with HTML,
FrontPage, Sharepoirt Portal Server, Exchange, and other 3rd party packages. Your Bandwidth is limited only by your service provider.
Windows server 2008 now allows a website to work along with streaming media with only 1 external IP Address. Using this method All site editing is done on your own PC as mine is and all I use is simple HTML. Don't forget to open port 554 on your router and in Windows firewall. Once you have your site working simply copy and save your wwwroot folder on a usb drive and in case you need to reinstall you can simply copy the files back to the wwwroot folder.
For those people that have Windows Server versions of Windows you can use Windows Streaming Media. Setup of Streaming Media is simple to set up except when your IP address changes it will stop working. When setting up Steaming Media (Create an announcement) it will write an ASX file to the wwwroot folder. When someone opens the file it will call Streaming Media Services to play the indicated media. When Your IP Address changes, This file will contain your former IP address and it needs to be corrected. Also, the Publishing Point name will contain the old IP Address. Simply open Windows Media Services and select the Publishing Point you were using and choose create a New Announcement. Make sure to put in the new IP address and check the option to overwrite the ASX file to the wwwroot folder. Go back the the ASX file in the wwwroot folder and open with notepad and verify the new IP Address in the 2 locations. Change if needed. Steaming Media will work again. I have included 2 demos to help illustrate this. 2 ethernet cards and cables are required for streaming from a web page.
Streaming Media Create Announcement for Publishng point and checking the automatically created webpage Streaming Media ASX File (IP Address Change)
A list of Microsoft Firewall Ports is included.
Windows Media Firewalls
How to add and remove ipaddress from http listener
The following Demo is a quick overview of Windows Free Media Encoder. It is what I use for screenshots and is also used for file conversions at different bit rates, and streaming video remotely to a streaming video server. Encoder Demo.
The next demo is Windows Media Sevices preliminary setup to prepare for incomming remote video stream from another computer running Windows Media Encoder.
Setting up an Announcement Publishing Point Push:* method
This last Demo shows how to create an announcement for a publishing point and shows the file it creates and how to link to the file from a web page. Create Announcement And Insert Link on Web Page
One last Demo How To set up your Windows Media Encoder using Push:* to a Windows Media Server. In the server Publishing Point key in the IP number of my server. 99.46.96.190 Publishing Point Name "Camera". In URL to server HTTP://107.10.202.82:8080/Camera. It may ask for a login the first time but afterwards you can go to my website www.viewcrafters.com, scroll down to the Camera Link, click on it and see your video. How To Send Your Video Stream To My Site
Microsoft Windows came out with a newer more compatible Media Encoder called Expression Encoder 4 and they have a Free version for beginners which works fine for remotely encoding and streaming a webcam to a Streaming Server. You need the Free .Net Framework 4 before it will install. It has a slightly different layout but is much easier to implement. I now use Expression Encoder 4 for remote webcams. After installation Open Expression 4 to select your video source and microphone. Select Publishing point for output method, check location box and type in: http://viewcrafters.com:8080/Camera Afterwards click on the connect button and it will say connected. Finally click on the encode button where you should get a monitor window of your camera output. Check my website homepage and click on the Live Camera link to verify it is working.
I have included a screen capture demonstration to show how simple it can be. Send Webcam Video To My Website.
I discovered the general problem I was having. My domain name was registered with dyndns.com. The only problem is that they were bought by name.com. I had to go to the name.com site and register with their dns name servers instead of the dyn nameservers. I tried to buy SSL service but buying from tname.com only works when they host your domain. My domain is hosted with dyndns.com for free since I was a member at the beginning and they gave free hosting with no expiration. They will not release my DNS domain name unless I cancel the free account which I don't want to do. In any case My domain name is hosted for free at dyndns.com and the DNS names servers that work are at Name.com. It is about 100.00 a year to use Name.com web hosting service but they have better support and great bandwidth, With dyn you use the bandwidth alloted by your service provider.
So viewcrafters.com works from Name.com and markziegler.dyndns.org works with dyn. All I have to pay at this point is the 20.00 annual DNS renewal fee. I am glad I got it working because there are so many Google links out there pointing to my site.
http://viewcrafters.dyndns.org I got a new email too administrator@viewcrafters.com. PS. The publishing point references only work with Windows Server 2008 R2 which is no longer supported.
