Website on my own server (keeping domain instead of IP as URL)

[TodVader]

I setup a G4 667Mhz OS X 10.4 Web server.

I have a test domain that is antibs.net. I redirected that domain to:
"qcmat.no-ip.org"
which will redirect to whatever my dynamic IP is (with an app that informs no-ip.com of what my new IP is as soon as it changes) plus the port of the website (which is 8080 for this one).

What I want is to keep the antibs.net instead of having URLs like
"http://96.21.3.99:8080/poweredbymacosxserver.gif"

The IP can change anytime so I really need to get a static URL for the search engines.

Is there any way to do this?

[ChrisA]

I setup a G4 667Mhz OS X 10.4 Web server.

I have a test domain that is antibs.net. I redirected that domain to:
"qcmat.no-ip.org"
which will redirect to whatever my dynamic IP is (with an app that informs no-ip.com of what my new IP is as soon as it changes) plus the port of the website (which is 8080 for this one).

What I want is to keep the antibs.net instead of having URLs like
"http://96.21.3.99:8080/poweredbymacosxserver.gif"

The IP can change anytime so I really need to get a static URL for the search engines.

Is there any way to do this?

If you are already using no-ip.com then you are already not using numeric IP addresses in your URL. I don't understand the question. You seem to have to right, no-ip.com will with the help of an application you run keep track of your changing dynamic IP address. I've done this myself. The only problem is that my DSL line has very slow upstream speed so people complain that my "server" is slow.

[TodVader]

When you go to www.antibs.net , you will be redirected to qcmat.no-ip.org which redirects to http://96.21.3.99:8080/. I want to have www.antibs.net as a URL instead of http://96.21.3.99:8080/. If I want to go to contact.html , I want www.antibs.net/contact.html, not http://96.21.3.99:8080/contact.html.

I don't know if this is possible but I have no idea how to direct a domain to my server.

[steviem]

Speak to your hosting company, they will be able to change your dns entry.

So it currently has this:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
antibs.net. 3600 IN A 66.40.7.250

and they can change it to:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
antibs.net. 3600 IN A 96.21.3.99

[SailorTom]

I use DynDNS with one of their free domains to run my dev sites on my webserver. You can pay a small fee and use your own registered domain.

[wpotere]

I use DynDNS with one of their free domains to run my dev sites on my webserver. You can pay a small fee and use your own registered domain.

^^ This...

Point your ISP to DynDNS and then use the tool to load the dynamic IP to DynDNS which will allow you to route it to your home server.

[Cromulent]

If you are using this website for anything important then do not host it yourself. Pay for some professional hosting, you'll never be able to match the uptime / accessibility of a professionally hosted site if you host it at home.

[jtara]

The only way to do this is to use a DNS provider for your domain that supports dynamic updates. Similar to what you are doing with no-ip, but updating the A record for your website on your domain, rather than an A record on a subdomain. (Thus eliminating the need for a redirect.)

However, your users will still experience short outages when the IP address changes. And they are still going to get sluggish performance, assuming, like most consumer Internet connections, you don't have much "upload" bandwidth.

The other way to do this, which I don't recommend is a "framed" redirect. This will fool humans, but won't help with search engines. The redirect server (which is just a web server, and has NOTHING to do with DNS) serves a simple page which has an HTML frame (potential problem: this is NOT a part of any official HTML specification and never will be, but is "grandfathered" into current browser implementations because it was an early Netscape feature). Inside the frame is a redirect to your website. So, the URL bar shows the address of the "container" page.

Better just to get a real web host. They're cheap.