I am confused on how I setup DNS to point to my domain. I am hosting my site on my computer and using freedns to find my site.

Now my machine ip address is 192.168.1.4 which I think is what they call internal IP

in my /etc/hosts file I have:

127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4

192.168.1.4 mywebsite.com www.mywebsite.com

On Free DNS I set the A record to point to my external ip address which I got from whatismyip.com..

Anything else I need? Everything else good? Or do I also make an A record of 192.168.1.4

What about hostname as well what do I name that? That should be in my router or?

Sorry for all the ?'s

Addresses in the 192.168.xxx.xxx range are for use in local networks, not for publication.

Do you have a static ip address for your router? It's the address of your router that matters, as that is the public face of your network. Then, in your router, you need to forward the relevant incoming ports to the computer in question.

You should also check your ISP's terms of service. In the USA, most ISPs forbid public-facing servers for home users, though some are more aggressive about it than others. For example, my old ISP did not block port 80, so I found it relatively easy to self-host my website (which I no longer do--and I was fully prepared to take it down if they noticed it, but they never did, as it was small and innocuous, plus their terms of service wording was rather ambiguous, but that's another story). My current ISP blocks port 80 unless you have a business-level account.

When I self-hosted my website, I used noip.com for dynamic DNS. You might find their help files very, well, helpful.

Got ya; so in /etc/hosts do I put in local ip or external? No I have DHCP. I will look at noip.com

Thanks

You should not have to do anything in /etc/hosts. The relevant configuration is all outside your computer.

+1 on frankbell's information. The external (Internet-facing) IP address of your router is what you want your DNS name to point to, then forward internally to the appropriate computer (internal IP address, port ...) on your home network as per your router's utility.

Cheers,

What router do you have?

Actiontec

Well, yes and no. Ideally you're correct, however some routers/modems block loopback connections, in which case he would be unable to access his site from inside his LAN using his own external IP address. In that case, he would need to add a line in /etc/hosts to redirect to the server's LAN IP rather than trying to go out and back in again through the router's WAN IP.

Well I am able to get to my external ip. However, it's slow is this because of what your talking about @suicidaleggroll

No that would just be a yes/no effect, not a throttle. You could put an entry in /etc/hosts which might speed things up a bit, but it may also make it more difficult to troubleshoot networking issues.