[bsgroups] You ca call me Ray, you can call me Jay
- From: Jerry McCaffrey <jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Bsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 19:45:05 -0400
Shayne
Glad you got the installs for XAMPP completed. Thank you for finding the
control panel, my XAMPP install was before that was added so I added it
now. That is helpful especially to see the little green running labels.
You seem confused by the networking addresses. For any web site there are
many times two ways to reach it. First is the name such as www.lehigh.edu
(a college by Bonny) and that is also at an IP address
of 128.180.2.14. If you go to a command box and type in C:\ping
www.simoogle.com (a tribute to by deceased dog) it will resolve to
216.52.184.240. Where http://128.180.2.14 will take you to Lehigh
University, http://216.52.184.240 will take you to a screen saying that
"We're sorry, but we were unable to process the redirection request for the
site you are attempting to access. If you feel that you are receiving this
message in error, please check the URL and try your request again." That
is because that page is being referred from one web hosting company to
another and needs the name ID to properly identify it. The IP
216.52.184.240 actually goes to a hosting server at namecheap.com
All of this magic is done on the Internet with DNS (dynamic name service).
Your webserver would need a DNS entry for outsiders to reach it by name. If
it had a static IP folks could reach it without a DNS entry if that IP was
entered. What happens however is that multiple websites are hosted on a
single webserver so you need a name for that server to parse the traffic
even if you can reach it by IP address only.
Now to "localhost." Your computer actually has 4 identities. Mine has a
computer name, "Schuster." My computers are named after our
Weimaraners....Simon, Schuster, and Moose(the laptop). You probably know
you computers name, if not it is available on the properties page for My
Computer. By convention "localhost" is an alias and can be substituted for
the computer's name on any computer, but only on that same computer.
Similarly the local IP of my is 192.168.0.13 and can be found from the
command prompt with "ipconfig." Again there is a shorthand alias for the
local IP of all computers so they can talk to themselves and that IP is
127.0.0.1 If you start your Apache and see the little green running light
you can enter any of the four address to get to the Apache splash page:
http://127.0.0.1/xampp/splash.php
http://192.168.0.13/xampp/splash.php
http://schuster/xampp/splash.php
http://localhost/xampp/splash.php
Localhost and 127.0.0.1 allow programmers and controls to access the
webserver locally without knowing it's name or local IP. Just to confuse
you further, there is a text file buried on your computer called Hosts. If
you put an entry there, you can point any name like "www.simoogle.com" to
any IP, including 127.0.0.1 so you could use the actual name to run it
(only for you) on your test server without using any of the above four
methods. Of course your could not reach the real external site without
changing or deleting the host entry. Just as an aside, there is also a
file lmhosts that allows you to associate your computer name with a
specific IP. This can be helpful or dangerous DAMHIK.
So if you didn't understand the localhost concept before, I'm sure that I
have totally confused you. But just type it in at the beginning of the
address and it will keep it on your local webserver instead of scouring the
Internet for a different one. Hope that helps.
Jerry
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