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I see there are many related questions to this one, however the answers given seem to be a little vague for a novice like me.

I've got a dedicated LAMP stack running Fedora 16 locally on my home network. Everything works fine internally. I can access the Apache server from other machines on the network using the internal IP in a browser. I'm using the stack for a local file server as well as a development environment for websites. There are a couple of reasons why I would like the development sites hosted on the machine to be available publicly.

1.) I use a CMS that has paid add-ons which allows you to assign the paid license to a domain. I can't develop with paid add-ons on the closed dev server.

2.) I would occasionally like for clients to be able to view the site dev at late stages before it goes live.

I have a domain (foo.com, and I want to point a ***sub***domain (dev.foo.com) to the local server. I know this is best accomplished with a Static IP, however my IP from my ISP is Dynamic and I don't think there is any way to change that.

From what I have read, services like ZoneEdit & DynDNS are supposed to be able to accomplish this, but I have tried both and found it very confusing.

Also the server is behind a router and I have also read that you need to set up DDNS(?) in your router, that many routers have presets for these services, and I've found that DynDNS is the only one my router seems to support.

biggles
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1 Answers1

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Your idea is correct. What you can do is make dev.example.com a CNAME that points to your home network. You need to figure out how to use DynDNS (it's really trivial, sign up then enter the information into your router). After which you make the CNAME point to your DynDNS domain. Make sure to redirect port 80 and 443 if your web server is behind NAT.

gparent
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  • Thanks for the pointers, however I'm having the most trouble trying to figure out DynDNS's management center/UI. I've found some tutorials, but they all refer to DynDNS's free service which I believe has been discontinued or just hidden really really well. It's hard to tell what service/package I actually need to purchase in order to accomplish what I want since the goal of their website seems to be push selling the services without even explaining their nuances. I don't suppose you might know of any resources or links that might help me? (I've contacted sales, we'll see how that goes.) – biggles Mar 29 '12 at 17:57
  • Yeah, I don't know if their site has changed but you're right, it seems a bit confusing. Looks like you can keep a domain if you take their 14-day pro trial... but that's annoying. Personally I use no-ip so I can't really help, sorry. – gparent Mar 29 '12 at 18:06
  • I would definitely go with another provider, but since DynDNS is the only option for DDNS on my router, I feel that would make things more difficult than they already are. – biggles Mar 29 '12 at 18:10