This is simple I hope :)
When I create a new web application in WSS does it need to be on port 80 if I want to point an external domain name at it?
Everything is standard in terms of IIS and ports that are open i.e. port 80 is the only one open.
I am guessing if I let WSS assign a port number to the new web application surely this can never be accessed externally unless I open the assigned port?
Cheers
It only needs to be on port 80 if your firewall rules require it. When you choose the port while creating the web application it is just setting the port in IIS.
Generally "yes" ... but you know there's more to the answer than just that :-)
Disclaimer: for the sake of simplicity, I'm not going to assume any load balancing switches, firewalls, and reverse proxies between your WSS site and the Internet. When you start throwing network hardware into the equation, the configuration permutations jump dramatically.
That said, I'd say it's probably more common that WSS site admins actually extend existing applications to the Internet rather than starting out that way. Here's what I mean:
You create a web application (which is assigned to the default zone) and create a site collection within it. The web application starts out as being available only to you or your organization internally, may be named simply by server name or IP address, and may be on a high (i.e., non port 80) port.
When you're ready to take the site live, you extend the existing web application (via "Central Administration" > "Application Management" > "Create or extend Web application") to an additional zone. This results in the creation of an additional IIS site through which your site collection can be accessed.
When you're carrying out #2, you should pay particular attention to port and host header that you assign to the extended web application -- they should be in-sync with the URL and port you want to present to the outside world. So, if you want to expose your site collection to the Internet as http://www.itsmysite.com, you would extend your web application to a host header of "www.itsmysite.com" on port 80. (Again: additional networking equipment allows you to change things around significantly, so what I'm saying is assuming a direct connection between your web front end and the Internet).
When you extend your web application as described in step #2, you'll see that SharePoint takes care of adding a new web site within IIS, and it'll configure that site (e.g., host header) according to the parameters you specify during extension. As a general rule of thumb, you should avoid changing settings from directly within IIS -- SharePoint takes care of synchronizing settings between the farm and IIS (with only a few notable exceptions, such as SSL certificates).
I hope that helps!
THe easiest way is to create additional HOST(A) records in AD for the machine it is running on. say your machine is called 'weirdnamecreatedbysysadmins-01' then have your sysadmin create a nicer name as a HOST record to point to the same IP-addresz, i.e. 'extranet'. YOu can do this as many times you want.
Then, register the new HOST record in your external DNS (usually at your internet provider) and open request to that machine's port 80 in your firewall.