Hello,
I have been playing with apache2 and doing some things like setting up a personal wiki/photo gallery etc.

I have a dynamic IP, so I have set up an account with www.no-ip.org so that I run their software on my server, and it updates them whenever the external ip address changes. (at least that is my understanding, i'm still a newb)

Example:
myname.no-ip.org
resolves to
1.2.3.4 (which would be my networks external IP), and assuming the request is on port 80, it forwards to my server and loads the index.html).

This works perfectly when I am outside my home network. When I am trying to access my page through the myname.no-ip.org from my internal network, however, it is hit and miss. Sometimes it works, other times it gives me a 404.

I believe the correct solution is to set up an internal DNS server that will resolve to my servers internal IP address when the request comes from within the network.

Is this the right approach? Any documentation that could be provided as to how to do this for a newbie would be greatly appreciated.

If this isn't the right approach, please provide guidance as to how I should be trying to resolve the issue.

Thank you in advance for your help, and if you need further information feel free to ask.

Second thoughts:
After working on the problem, i wonder if I'm doing something wrong in /etc/hosts. I'm currently doing some reading about it, could this being set up incorrectly cause this type of thing?

After further research, I think i figured out the primary issue.

My ISPs DNS server had not updated with the name I was using. nslookup to my ISPs DNS did not resolve, but nslookup using googles DNS did resolve. I have therefore changed the default DNS server on my router and the issue seems mostly fixed.