In message <snip by moderator>, Joseph <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>I too would like to allow access from the Internet to my web 
>server, at some time in the future, but I really don't have a clue as 
>to how to go about it.

I don't know about that, I wouldn't want to do it for security reasons.  

I allow users across an intranet to access the pages - this is just as
though they were reaching a site on the web, except that all the data is
kept in-house.  For security!

>Do I need to sign up to one of those dynamic ip web sites. I don't 
>have a domain name and to be honest, I don't think I really need one 
>until I am more proficient at secure PHP coding.

I would expect that you could allow users on to your machine, if you had
a fixed IP address for your internet connection.  Certainly around here,
that is quite difficult to get.  But as I said, it's not something that
I would get into.

>I have another machine which I could set up with linux, but it only 
>has about 256 megs of ram and an 80 gig HD. Is this sufficient for 
>older version of linux and are older versions of linux as secure as 
>modern ones?

Sounds like a lot of trouble, when you could get a domain name for less
than $10, and sometimes free ad-supported hosting - do Godaddy have PHP
and MySQL on their free packages? - or paid hosting at less than $5 per
month. 

On my server, I can set up domains without a domain name (useful if the
domain is already working on another host, prior to being moved). 

>I also read somewhere that it is good practice to have the db on a 
>different computer, both because of security and also because if the 
>db becomes too big, it's much faster. Again, is this correct?

When I worked for lots of banks, we had the databases on the same
servers, for security.  Less "boundaries" to protect, and no raw data
was being passed between servers. That was a few years ago.

-- 
Pete Clark

Sunny Andalucia
http://hotcosta.com/Andalucia.Spain

Reply via email to