Hey everybody,

I got a question about using Apache to host a website. I already own a domain name, and its currently being hosted on my college's servers (pretty useful since i dont have to pay for it, well except tution). but my question is how do people use apache to host their own sites? a domain name has to be linked to a static ip address, so how to home users host their own sites? most people doing this already probably have a high speed connection, but that ip address is dynamic. so how does that ip address keep insync with the domain name? i hope i make enough sense to get a informative response

Yeah you make sense. A connection with a dynamic IP isn't the best environment for hosting a site, not even close. You could set up a daemon to update the DNS server with your current IP every 5 mins but then with DNS propagation you'd probably have a new IP by the time the rest of the world could see your site. If you connect through a router and don't turn your router off then you keep your IP because the connection stays, I have a dynamic IP but it's been the same for weeks

Or you could try a service like DynDNS, for free they give you a program to run that updates their servers and you get a subdomain. I think for a small fee you can use your domain with them but I'm not sure, you could have a look.

DJ,

thanks for the response, my ip address changes every 24 hours by default, i dont think theres a way around that, my router and modem stay on all the time, but the ip address changes anyway.

does anyone else host their domain using apache?

Ahh well.. then a service like DynDNS is probably your best bet.