Setting up first website...
 

Anyone that can help me would be great. I am trying to set up my own website. I was told to go and buy a domain name, I did that! I was told to go and get a server at a hosting company....I did that as well. I was told to give the details of my dns to my domain registrar...I did that! I am now completely lost as to what to do. I am only wanting this box to be for experimenting with different code and to put up videos of my family so that my family around the world can watch. I honeslty have no clue where to begin here though! I can connect via ip to my apache page, but nothing beyond that. I have googled and googled but the information is usually quite vague as in "now set up your dns". I want to learn how to set up a site, code a site, figure out the inner workings, but damn, I cannot even get my domain name to be recognized when I put it in...any help...greatly appreciated!

To get the domain name pointing to the server you need to set up your DNS listing.

As for what to do to set up a site, it all depends what type of site you want to set up. Different types of site have different software available, or your could code one yourself using HTML, PHP, etc.

ok, well your next step is to just set up your dns.

;-)

so what does happen if you try to connect by the domain name? from a console run "dig mydomainname.com" and see what it says. The DNS is actually a two stage affair assuming that your registrar is not doing your DNS as well. you say you've told your registrar the DNS details. what details were these? what they should be told is the name servers that you want them to tell someone to query in order to resolve details about it. these are "NS" (nameserver) records. this record should then point to the DNS service you are using, and it is *there* that you add the additional records, A's (www.domain.com is at 12.34.56.78), CNAME's (othersite.domain.com is at the same place as www.domain.com), MX's (mail exchange) (mail for domain.com goes to mail.domain.com). This level of detail is normally directly acessible and configured by you personally via some web interface such as zoneedit.com. However you have said that you've given some information to your registrar already, so that'd suggestion you already know a lot of this.

Hello and thank you for your information. I do know a bit about the configuration of servers, I just do not understand the configuration of servers as it pertains to getting them online. When I dig branefactery.com it does show my nameserver ip....so I obviously have done something right somewhere. I have been allocated a static ip address to use and ns1 and ns2 information. I am wanting to get my site up by my own hands in the sense of coding. I want to use html for my sites and learn by fire. I am going to be putting up videos in jpeg4 format...later on that though. Any ideas of what I need to do now?

ok, so who allocated you static addresses and the ns1 / ns2? they aren't the same pieces of information right? who IS doing your DNS?

If you want to learn by fire you should learn to use Google. The answers to all your questions are on the Internet in very well written tutorials about how to publish a website and set up a web server. You are wasting everyone's time here asking for step by step answers on how to set up your website. You are not learning anything about putting up your own website you are asking everyone to tell you how to do it.

Do some reading and learn to find answers on your own. You are not asking for an answer to one question here you are asking everyone to explain step by step how to set up your website.

Simplest way is to buy a domain via google (who internally buys it from puffdaddy.com i think!). Once you do that - Google will help you through the whole DNS registration, e-mail configuration, web page creation, etc.

And the best part is - it only costs $10 for all this.
:)

Debian Kernel

The web hoster that is providing you the server space has the tools necessary to get you up and running. If that is not the case, terminate that webhoster and get a good one.
You have the apache server up and accessible by IP -- Contact the web hoster for assistance in adding content.
probably need to FTP photos and video up to the server so that they will be accessible via the apache interface
If you are going to put up a Family Forum phpBB3 works well on an apache, mysql, php base.
XAMPP has a nice package that loads up everything except the forum and provides the platform to do the rest.

Bottom line it is as easy as you think it should be, but you may need to nudge the provider for startup assist or failing that shop around for a new provider

In the meantime google sampp and phpBB3 and look it over

Good luck!

evalutinglinux - you're suggesting *exactly* what the OP *doesn't* want. doing what you say teaches him *nothing* about dns, web servers, email or anything. not a sausage.

wrt to John test's comments hosting services take many forms, and all the while you're configuring *other* peoples existing systems then you're probably fine to deliberately go down to pull things into smaller pieces. it's when you think you can run it in your cupboard that you are possibly on dodgy ground. So whilst i'd say that most hosts should offer more of an end to end solution whilst still letting you have control (i use dreamhost for about $70 a year all in and get exactly that to a good level of depth and control) if you don't want that functionality and only want the end server from a host, not registration and dns, then it's not an open and shut case that it's a bad shop to be in.

"AuroraCA If you want to learn by fire you should learn to use Google. The answers to all your questions are on the Internet in very well written tutorials about how to publish a website and set up a web server. You are wasting everyone's time here asking for step by step answers on how to set up your website. You are not learning anything about putting up your own website you are asking everyone to tell you how to do it.

Do some reading and learn to find answers on your own. You are not asking for an answer to one question here you are asking everyone to explain step by step how to set up your website".

Hey asshole, if you would have read my post you would have seen that I was looking for help (after a week of searching google and trying every whacked out method they offer information on) and not looking for your typical forum rhetoric of "go somewhere else and look for the answer, we are all busy here doing important things that a noob wouldn't understand". I posted on the linux NEWBIE forum, so why don't you go and be a selfish asshole knowledge hording bitch somewhere else! I am tired of assholes like you! Greedy punk ass.....


Ok, on another note, No, my hosting company did not provide me with the same info for my ns1 and ns2 and my static ip address. My site's name is going to be branefactery.com and I still want to learn how to code it myself, and when the time comes for that, I will GOOGLE a tutorial as there are many well written ones out there, but the first thing I have to do, and why I am here asking for direction, is to get branefactery.com to resolve to my ip address so that I can start to learn.

Ok.
Please avoid words like a********, even if he did kind of deserve it. Lets try to keep this civilised ok?

Now, I'd start by talking to your webhosting provider. Unless you've deliberately tried to get one that doesn't provide any support, most will help you at least get DNS working and tell you how to login to your website to be able to load/amend code for it.
Get those 2 things sorted first and then come back and tell us which distro & version this site is on, plus whats installed (with versions) eg Apache, MySQL etc.
Also, whether you've got full cmd line root access or have to go through some kind of ctrl like CPanel or webmin.

Calm down!

It's quite obvious that you are grateful for any advice given. I hope you find it. Your attitude and response were very inappropriate for someone requesting assistance.

Even the $10 registrars will register your URL and have a mechanism to link it to an IP. You should ask the customer service of your registrar to set it up for you or ask them how you can access their menu driven system to make the changes yourself.

You will want to link your URL to your server static IP. You will need to set up apache on your server to get it to recognize browser inquiries to your IP address and send the inquiries to the appropriate website directory on your server.

In short your registrar should handle the linking of your URL to your static IP and set up your DNS server(s).

When you enter your URL into your web browser you should get "It works!" displayed in the upper right hand corner of your web page.

Next you need to select a directory in which to publish your web page. The default web page locatoin is usually /var/www/ however some services will set your web page location in a directory called /home/public_html which is linked to a directory /home/www .

You will want to select a program to write your HTML code for your web page. A good editor to use in Linux is KompoZer. This will allow you to write your web site page by page. Next, upload the coded web pages to your /home/www directory and your website is published.

Is this more what you had in mind?

so who DID provide you with the ns1 / ns2 info? Please don't hold information back from us, i've asked you for this a number of times and you're not telling for some reason I don't understand. If you don't get what i'm asking in the first instance then say so.

and as above, keep it civil if you wish to remain a valued member of this site. Some of the info here might be a little off what you're specifically asking, but you are getting a LOT of very good help.

Agreed and I apologize. If you only knew the amount of forum snobs I have dealt with then you would most likely understand. I am using carohosting. I do know that they would be willing to help, but they are more prone to just fix the issue whereas I want to learn to fix the issue myself. I understand help desks well enough also to where I do not want to go in there and ask for the steps. I would rather come here, where the pressure isn't on anyone to fix my problems and we can look at the situation from a relaxed standpoint. I will learn this way. I apologize also that I seemed to not have answered your question. It was not intentional. I am using centos 5 on two 500gb hard drive's in a dell server. Right now I am just trying to get branefactery.com to resolve. I really really do appreciate all the help that has came my way and getting this server online and playing around with it may allow me to help in here as well...that would be nice! Once again, thanks for all the help!

so they registered your domain as well as provided you the server and ns records? If they are ticking every box at the moment, then looking at their site is there not a control panel that you are meant to be configuring this through? Unless you're running your own dns server, which for now i would suggest you avoid, you would need to use their web control panels and such to add an A record somewhere. if you have got a domain name and server+ip from them at the same time i'd expect them to automatically join the dots. if you've bought seperately i'd expect them to probably still do that for you, or point you to their web panel, be it cpanel or some such to add those details yourself.

doing a dig we now get this:

; <<>> DiG 9.2.3 <<>> @dns1.menandmice.com branefactery.com ANY
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 16745
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;branefactery.com. IN ANY
;; ANSWER SECTION:
branefactery.com. 172800 IN NS ns1.carohosting.com.
branefactery.com. 172800 IN NS ns2.carohosting.com.
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
branefactery.com. 172800 IN NS ns2.carohosting.com.
branefactery.com. 172800 IN NS ns1.carohosting.com.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.carohosting.com. 765 IN A 64.132.46.105
ns2.carohosting.com. 765 IN A 64.132.46.106
;; Query time: 209 msec
;; SERVER: 217.151.171.7#53(dns1.menandmice.com)
;; WHEN: Thu Oct 16 08:48:31 2008
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 142

which does back up that they are doing everything and you need to log in and click around a bit.