http://localhost?

Question

Hi Im looking for a program that i can download so i can make a website on my local network. I want to be able to visit it from any computer on my local network by typing in my browser http://localhost. Any information would be great thanks!

I have already tryed wamp server.

Answer 1

Hi,



As stated you will need to use a web server, such as IIS (which may already be installed, check under admin tools).



Alternatively you can use one of the free webservers available for download.



To address your point of http://localhost.



SO on your PC you have a few ways of resolving names, ( depending on how your system is configured will determine the exact order these lookups happen) basically when you tell your PC to connect to a name it needs to find an IP address to connect to.



It will look in some files on your PC, they are the hosts file (holds DNS resolution information) and the LMhosts file (holds wins information). If it cannot find an entry for the name you want in either of thes eit will then go to your configured (Local) DNS server and ask it for an answer (called an "A" record resolution". This is what happens when you type in www.yahoo.com).



By default your hosts file has an entry that looks like:



127.0.0.1 local hosts



That tell your pc that whenever someone goes to localhost, actually they are asking for 127.0.0.1.



(open a command prompt and type ping localhost )



I won't go into the intracacies of ip addressing but suffice to say 127.0.0.1 means this local machines network interface (nic card)



Interestingly a browser connects to port 80 by default, (or port 443 for SSL).



So what you are actualy asking your computer to do is to connect to port 80 (the webserver) on my own network interface (or TCP stack for the sake of accuracy), and this then hands the request to your webserer which lives on port 80.



Hope this helps



Owen

Answer 2

You won't be able to type in http://localhost at every PC and get to the same website. localhost is the local network card of the PC. You would need to have a web server running on a PC and then get to it using the name or IP address. For example, http://10.1.1.50 or http://officecomputer. Doing this will allow you to access the website from any computer on your network.



A free webserver that you can try is Apache, or you can install Microsoft's IIS. You should be able to install IIS on a PC running Windows 2000 or XP. I believe you need XP Professional though, as Home Edition or Media Center Edition I believe don't have it.

Answer 3

In order to serve your own website, you will need web server software such as Apache



The second half of your question seems to imply some misconceptions about the way "localhost" and web servers work. localhost refers to the local machine. When you write "http://localhost" you are saying - please connect to the local machine and try to fetch the default page.



So either you can install a web server on each of your home network computers and copy the web page everywhere (which is ridiculous) or you can only do "http://localhost" on one of them (the one with the web server). On the other computers you'll just type "http://"

Answer 4

Chances are that if you have XP or Windows 2000 you are already running a webserver right now.



Check IIS in the control panel under Administrative Tools

Answer 5

Apache is the most popular web server. Try it http://apache.org