How to set up a simple web server(Windowws XP Pro)

Question

As a heads up, I have some experience programming on Windows and other devices, but I have almost zero experience doing web anything, so I'm sure this is simple/easy to find online and I just don't know what I'm doing.

I have a computer on my home network that is connected to the internet(I can VNC into it from online if that helps) and I want to set it up so that I can connect to this PC online and access a web page stored on the PC.

This will be used by two people tops, so I'm not concerned about the number of connections or that kind of thing, I just want to be able to look at this page from online. I'm not sure what to call this, but I guess I want to have own webpage on my home PC that I can access to do stuff remotely.

Basically, I want to be able to go to http://{my-pc-ip}/webpage.html and see it online. If it helps, this is largely a learning exercise for me, I want to experiment and play around with what I can do through a webpage on my home network, through an online web page interface. Like maybe start a program on my home machine using a button the page, but do this from a computer connected over the Internet(this stuff I'll figure out myself, I just don't know how to set up the online stuff).

Answer 1

Not really programming related, but none-the-less, WAMP is by far the easiest solution out there.

http://www.wampserver.com/en/

Answer 2

To expose your PC as a web server you need to do couple of steps:

1. Have external ip (static).
2. Configure the firewall to allow incomming connection to your PC to port 80 (if you need SSL then port 443 too).
3. Set up a web server: you can use IIS (if WinXP is not Home edition), Apache server or smallest possible HTTP server like ihttpd.
4. Put the pages into your root directory.

That is the basic explanation of the steps to do.

Answer 3

Hi, this is quite simple. You can use either IIS which is shipped with your XP Pro or use free and open source solutions:

1. XAMPP - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html. I've been using this for years. Very simple. The last step of installation is just to secure MySQL and FTP (if needed at all). PHP is shipped so you can start doing web development without extra hassle.

2. Lighttpd - http://www.lighttpd.net/. Another FOSS webserver, which is very light-weight.

There are a few more but Apache is the most popular so you can just go ahead with XAMPP which is very mature and has large community of users.

Lastly, remember to relax your firewall allow access to your IP address from LAN & VNC (whatever you needed). Some materials to get things done:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/security/winfirewall.mspx http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875357 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb877979.aspx http://members.shaw.ca/nicholas.fong/vnc/

Enjoy doing web!