Hi peeps and thanks for listening.

I have my own small forum which provides a small bit of enjoyment for people and am currently hosting it on my old laptop. I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 though some features have not been installed due to the age of the hardware I'm using (such as mail and ftp).

So I've decided to play around with the possibility of using my current laptop to be my webserver as it is certainly powerful enough but it is restricted by being wirelessly connected to my router.

I've installed XAMPP and have it configured, localhost brings up the relevant html page and I'm happy with this though when I forward port 80 from my old laptop to the new one, nothing can be found (after a while of searching). My domain name is pointed straight to my router and it all works well, just not when I forward port 80 to the new laptop.

Does anyone have any advice on this? Is XAMPP a good option over, say, Ubuntu 9.10 behind a virtual machine?

Current system - Windows 7 64-bit. I'm using a netgear router.

Thanks for your help,
Threep

What is your question? It is about if XAMPP is a good option for?

I would say no. I would choose Apache, PHP and MySQL. You can install with "apt-get" in Ubuntu. Search in Google about this.

XAMPP is a development tool more over than a live server environment with many of the settings being configured for this. I would as previously suggested not use it in a live environment and although dual booting ubuntu, Cent OS or similar with an apache server would work and allow you the flexibility to use the computer as a dedicated server it can bring further problems of security and server firewalls (an extra expense).

Though I can also see reasons as to not using a virtual machine that said I'd continue that approach due to the security benefits, although my real recommendation perhaps would be considered obvious due to what I do but none the less.

Personally if the site is small as you have said and you don't require any particular applications or background services to be run then a consideration should be given to shared hosting as security, the network, updates, configuration and the never ending list is looked after by the provider.

Yes, of course. If you are learning only you can stick with your laptop to host your web site.

If you project is serious then I'd suggest you to got with a shared hosting plan.

I have paid hosting with siteground but they claim it is using up too much of their processes! So I'm more than happy to do it myself.

I'm behind a router with all ports blocked other than 80 and I've followed a guide to help make the setup as secure as possible.

I guess my main real question is simply why do you think my domain times out and comes up with a page not found when forwarded to the laptop running apache (XAMPP comes with this) but works fine when forwarded to my hardwired server which I want to replace?

I am assuming the wireless is key here.

Many a years ago I two have used and now have clients from siteground ousted for similar reasons or leaving mainly due to the degradation of the service due to their overselling. As such I wouldn't avoid shared hosting due to this, mainly as such providers have these limitations due to what most here would consider bad practice.

As the developers say and as many sites and users of XAMPP will say it is not secure as such the following sums this up well "For development environments this is great but in a production environment it could be fatal." http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html (under the title of "a matter of security" further down the page)

Wireless should in theory not be the issue although personally I have never had a webserver under a wireless enviroment only homeservers. although the issue could be the security which is often the case as computer firewalls as standard will cause these problems, firstly try acessing port 80 via lan as a test.

if not another common issue is internet service providers often block the use of port 80 to avoid users having publicly available servers at their home premis under lower packages (non business) however this may not apply due to your past experience.

I don't think that wireless can be a problem in your situation. You can try to test if your web site is accesible first from your LAN and then from the Internet.

It is sure that you have to open the port in the router to redirect :80 of your IP to the :80 of the IP of your server.

I know this is a late reply but I'd thought to let you know what the issue was.

Everything was being forwarded to the correct ip address - the issue was the Windows 7 internal firewall was still blocking port 80 for incoming enquiries. So now the hardware and software firewalls are now open.

Cheers peeps

The peeps are happy you're happy !

Glad to here its working , will have to try and remember that one next time