3 Opening the Hardware Gate
Hardware routers come in all sorts of
shapes, sizes, default administrative
IPs, and port-forwarding configura-
tions. You’ll want to consult your
router’s manual as to the specific
way to configure your device for port
forwarding, but in general, it’s pretty
similar to how you set up your soft-
ware firewall.
You’ll have to enter a particu-
lar IP address into your browser to
access your router’s configuration
screen (usually it’s 192.168.0.1), and
somewhere in there will be a menu for
port forwarding. Type in the static IPaddress you just configured for your
PC in the Windows network settings
(our example was 192.168.0.2), and
forward the TCP ports 80, 443, and
3306 to that IP.
Now that you’re done playing
with IPs, you should hit up DynDNS
( http://www.dyndns.com ) and register for its
free static DNS service. Download
and run the site’s update client, and
your DynDNS web address (e.g.,
example.is-a-chef.org ) will always
point to the IP address of your router,
which will forward the traffic requests
right to your web server.Opening your ports on the software side is
usually only half the battle.2 Opening the Software End
Before you really start tinkering with
your machine, you’re going to want to
establish a functioning, nonrestricted
connection between your server and
the Internet. Typically, something’s
blocking the path: a software firewall, a
home router, or both.
While there are a number of soft-
ware firewalls you can have on your
machine, including the default Windows
firewall, the port-opening procedure is
similar for all. In Windows’ case, open
the firewall control panel and click the
Exceptions tab. Click “Add Port” and
enter the following: HTTP (80), HTTPS
(443), MYSQL (3306).
Now is a good time to get a static IP
address for your machine. Without it, your
router could reassign a different IP to your
server, nullifying the entire point of port for-
warding on the router. Click the Start but-
ton, then Run, and type in cmd. Hit Enter,
which pulls up a command prompt in itsown window. Type ipconfig /all, and
look for the Local Area Connection section.
Write down your IP address, Subnet Mask,
Default Gateway, and all the IP addresses
under “DNS servers.” Close the window
and go to the Control Panel’s Network
Connections menu. Right-click Local Area
Connection and select Properties. Find the
menu option for TCP/IP, select it, and click
the Properties button.
You should now see a window that
most likely has “Obtain an IP address
automatically” selected. Click “Use the
following...” for both sections, and begin
entering the information you just wrote
down. The only change should come in
the IP address field, where you’ll want
to pick an unlikely number far above
your current IP—if the IP you wrote
down is 192.168.0.1, for example, enter
192.168.0.250. Fire up your web browser
to make sure you can still connect to the
net, and you’re good to go.The free DynDNS service allows you to maintain
the same URL for your website even if your ISP
keeps giving your server different IP addresses.4 The Server Runneth Over
After all that networking configuration, installing the server appli-
cations themselves is a piece of cake. In just three clicks of the
default Next button, XAMPP will unload the big guns—Apache,
MySQL, and PHP—onto your system. While it’s chugging along,
go get a drink or something; on an average machine, the installa-tion takes about five minutes or so. Be sure to install the XAMPP
components as Windows services when prompted.
Once that’s done, pull up your web browser and point it to
http://localhost. Select your language, and you’ll find yourself on
the XAMPP main screen. Click Status, and if everything installed56 MAXIMUMPC january 2007
how (^2) ImprovIng your pc experIence, one step at a tIme