I am just a little new to hosting a site from home. First off what is my servers nameserver title, if my domain controller is GATORDC and the server name is SERVER1 and the domain is GATORSTUDIOS.COM, i have SERVER1.GATORDC.GATORSTUDIOS.COM is that the nameserver? If I am building a new zone for WWW.GATORSTUDIOS.COM do I just use WWW as an alias and GATORSTUDIOS.COM as my forward lookup zone? Now I have an IP address from my isp, its not static, but is is has been the same IP address for almost 6 months and I have been hosting pages by using the IP address but I would like to have a domain recognizable to the public. If you could help me out or point me into the right direction I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Jason Moore

First of all I doŽ't think there is a soul on this forum who would recommend you host your own site from a DSL or Cable line in your own home. Its cheaper, more reliable and less hassle to use shared hosting.

However what you probably need to get your domain pointed at your semi-static IP is an outsourced DNS service.

Basically you get someone else to host your DNS and resolve your domain to your IP.

If your IP is not static then you might want to try www.dyndns.org this works best for cable users and you can get a free account for 5 host names.

If you IP hasn't changed in 6 months then you're probably a DSL user and you could use a static dns service in which case I prefer www.powerdns.net.

I am a cable user, and this is for testing and business purposes, I want to host my own project management tools and development stuff not for the public so to speak but for choice people to view, mainly a user login interface. But I dont want to have them type in an IP address to get there. I dont want to pay $50 a month for Coldfusion and SQL hosting, when I dont really need the bandwidth. My IP address changed only when I reset my adapter and took it down for a month. Thanks for the input, I still would like to try and host my own DNS, I have everything working internally, I can type www.gatorstudios.com and get my website internally but I just dont understand what they are asking for with Name Servers. I know my name server is the machine resolving the name, but what name do I use in the primary and secondary name servers do I use Server1(name of computer on network).GatorStudios.com, and why do they automatically assign an ip address that is incorrect and unchangeable.

If you want to totally host your own DNS you need to create name servers based on your IP address at your registrar. This requires that you have static IP addresses, as the timeout control of nameservers like this is beyond your control. Anytime your IP changed it would take you x amount of time to find out and update your name server records, and then another 24-72 hours for the change to propagate.

Your best bet is to use something outsourced, some great free ones are mentioned in an above post.

This will save you a lot of hassle. Though your best bet of course is to just outsource the whole hosting solution - if you plan on using very low bandwidth I'm sure you can find a provider to suppliment that and pro-rate the cost of the package accordingly. Bandwith is the major cost to any host not locked into contracts for Windows Hosts (these hosts must also cover 'license' fees for software) - one way you can get around being forced to use a Windows host is to use industry-standard software like MySQL and PHP instead of Coldfusion and SQL Server. This would not only decrease your time to develop, but would decrease your costs as well. You've mentioned that costs are important to you.

Thanks, you guys have been helpful. I am Coldfusion and MSSQL certified so I am very much a believer in the power of CF, I shy away from PHP and MySQL although I have done several sites using it. Thanks, I will look into it.

Well, In that case - you'll want to use CF and MSSQL for sure. It's great software if you like it, I don't want to try and bash your ways of doing things - that's just another great thing about the current state of the industry - you have lots of choice!

So, here's what I think you should do - use a service such as dyndns.org and have THEM host the DNS. You'll have a really hard time doing the nameservers yourself - just because of the way the technology is. Not to say it isn't possible! But it just won't work well even if you do know what you are doing inside out.

Run all of your software like MSSQL, CF, and your web server on your local computer and I think that dyndns comes with a client for windows that automagically uploads your IP address every once and while, to ensure that the domain points to the correct IP. You'll save a lot of headache, its free, and the only downside is that you won't be able to have "myname.myname.com"...

I agree, the problems with hosting your own DNS with a single routable IP (fault tolerance for a start) means that its a headache you only want to take on if you like headaches...

However here's loosely what you need to do:

Contact the registrar of Gatorstudios.com and ask them to register 2 names servers: ns1.gatorstudios.com and ns2.gatorstudios.com assign them the IP address of your machines. Your problem is... you need these to be static as they can't be dynamically updated. So if your IP address changed the whole setup would fail.

Assuming your IP didn't change then your DNS service would be able to resolve the names for you. eg: www.gatorstudios.com=xyz.xyz.xyz.xyz

However remember that your LAN IP addresses (172.26.0.x) are not going to be routable, so your web server will need to be on the same machine as your DNS...

Whatsmore your LAN machines will resolve the hostnames (www.gatorstudios.com) to public IP so this had better be acesssible from inside your network and not just reach your router.

I've never tried it but I think the only way this could work is if your web server/ nameserver and gateway machine are all one! Not an ideal set-up.

Thanks for all the help. I will advise you of the my solution. I found a friend(ironic) online, who happens to be a web host. He is now hosting my DNS(taking headaches away) and everything works fine now. www.gatorstudios.com(under construction). Thanks guys.

Good to hear - make sure he takes the timeout on your domain down to five minutes (600 seconds) so that WHEN (not if) you have to update your IP address in his nameserver the change can be made as quickly as possible, and will propagate out as fast as possible. 600 seconds is the lowest permittable by RFC's for DNS - I think.

There are places out there that will manage your name servers for you so that you can host at home but if you're just on a cable line and hosting one site, you are better off with a shared account like the good folks said above.