Need Help with setting up my website url.

chobo2 · March 16th, 2009, 06:00 PM

Hi

I want to do do some testing with Paypals IPN api but they don't allow you to test it on localhost. So I actually need to set it up somehow so that I can retrieve messages from my computer(otherwise I have to do it on a live server and every change I make I would have to reupload to test what would really suck).

So I have asp.net 3.5 website in VS2008 and I am using the built in webdevelopement thing.

So I tried to launch my site and change "localHost" to my ip address but this does not work. I just get the page cannot be found.

So I am not sure how to set it up.

Like I found this post

http://www.pdncommunity.com/pdn/boar...hread.id=10098

and it talks about this no-ip site so I signed up to it but I don't even know what to do with it. I don't know how to hook it up to my website on local host.

So I am out of ideas.

dparsons · March 18th, 2009, 01:03 AM

If this is for testing purposes, e.g. a development box, you may be able to "fake it" provided you can answer yes to the following items:

You are not on a business network and you have either a Static or Dynamic IP address assigned to you by your ISP.

You are working off of an XP Pro or Vista Business+ Box that has IIS running. (Vista Home MIGHT also be able to run IIS but I forget)

You are able to make changes to your local copy of IIS.

The network that your PC is on is either A) connected directly to a cable modem that does not have a built in Router or B) is connected to the internet via a router. In both cases you (or someone else) need to be able to administer changes to the router (this only applies to secnario A if the cable modem has a built in router).

If you answered yes to all of these you might be able to "fake out" PayPal with a bit of DynamicDNS. Head over to http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/ and click 'Get Started' and create an account (everything we will be doing is completely free). Once you get logged in click on 'Host Services' and then 'Add New Host Name'. One the next screen select a host name. I personally dont use a wildcard alias and don't see why you would need to either. Leave the Host With IP address radio ticked. For the IP address click the 'Use auto detected..." and leave mail routing unchecked then click 'Create Host'. On the next screen just click next and check out. Again this is completely free and will be reflected as such by the 0.00 purchase price.

Once you have completed this step and DNS has refreshed <yourhostname>.domain.com will now point at your box! Now, before you run back into visual studio you will want to do download and install this client on your machine IF your ip address is dynamic (if it is static dont worry about this): https://www.dyndns.com/support/clients/ What this client does is send your current IP information to DynDNS so that your host name is continually resolving to the correct IP address. This is necessary since you have no way of knowing when the lease on your IP address will expire and your ISP issues you a new one.

There are two things left for you to do. If you have a router somewhere on your network you will need to log into your router and redirect all traffic coming to your IP on port 80 to your computer. This is farily trivial with LinkSys routers and don't imagine its to much of a pain with other brands but RTM.

The final thing that you will need to do is setup IIS properly. Since you are using the personal version of IIS you are limited to one website and while there are some tricky things you can do to get the hostname to resolve to a virtual directory but your best bet is going to just test the PayPal coude out of your home directory (by default it is inetpub\wwwroot\). What I would do before you go to all this trouble is drop a simple HTML file into your webroot and goto: http://<yourhostname>.domain.com and see if the HTML file appears (i am assuming here that you have given the file a name so that IIS recognizes it as a default document such as Default.htm or Default.aspx otherwise you will need to specifiy the file name in the URL). If the page does not appear your port forwarding is probably not setup correctly. Again, RTM.

After that, you SHOULD be able to provid that hostname to test the paypal api stuff with. I have never tried it using DDNS but it stands to reason that it should work. One thing though, if it is using SSL make sure that port 443 also redirects to your machine.

hth.
-Doug

chobo2 · March 18th, 2009, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dparsons

If this is for testing purposes, e.g. a development box, you may be able to "fake it" provided you can answer yes to the following items:

You are not on a business network and you have either a Static or Dynamic IP address assigned to you by your ISP.

You are working off of an XP Pro or Vista Business+ Box that has IIS running. (Vista Home MIGHT also be able to run IIS but I forget)

You are able to make changes to your local copy of IIS.

The network that your PC is on is either A) connected directly to a cable modem that does not have a built in Router or B) is connected to the internet via a router. In both cases you (or someone else) need to be able to administer changes to the router (this only applies to secnario A if the cable modem has a built in router).

If you answered yes to all of these you might be able to "fake out" PayPal with a bit of DynamicDNS. Head over to http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/ and click 'Get Started' and create an account (everything we will be doing is completely free). Once you get logged in click on 'Host Services' and then 'Add New Host Name'. One the next screen select a host name. I personally dont use a wildcard alias and don't see why you would need to either. Leave the Host With IP address radio ticked. For the IP address click the 'Use auto detected..." and leave mail routing unchecked then click 'Create Host'. On the next screen just click next and check out. Again this is completely free and will be reflected as such by the 0.00 purchase price.

Once you have completed this step and DNS has refreshed <yourhostname>.domain.com will now point at your box! Now, before you run back into visual studio you will want to do download and install this client on your machine IF your ip address is dynamic (if it is static dont worry about this): https://www.dyndns.com/support/clients/ What this client does is send your current IP information to DynDNS so that your host name is continually resolving to the correct IP address. This is necessary since you have no way of knowing when the lease on your IP address will expire and your ISP issues you a new one.

There are two things left for you to do. If you have a router somewhere on your network you will need to log into your router and redirect all traffic coming to your IP on port 80 to your computer. This is farily trivial with LinkSys routers and don't imagine its to much of a pain with other brands but RTM.

The final thing that you will need to do is setup IIS properly. Since you are using the personal version of IIS you are limited to one website and while there are some tricky things you can do to get the hostname to resolve to a virtual directory but your best bet is going to just test the PayPal coude out of your home directory (by default it is inetpub\wwwroot\). What I would do before you go to all this trouble is drop a simple HTML file into your webroot and goto: http://<yourhostname>.domain.com and see if the HTML file appears (i am assuming here that you have given the file a name so that IIS recognizes it as a default document such as Default.htm or Default.aspx otherwise you will need to specifiy the file name in the URL). If the page does not appear your port forwarding is probably not setup correctly. Again, RTM.

After that, you SHOULD be able to provid that hostname to test the paypal api stuff with. I have never tried it using DDNS but it stands to reason that it should work. One thing though, if it is using SSL make sure that port 443 also redirects to your machine.

hth.
-Doug

Yes to all the questions you asked. I think i got it to work now with my ip address it was just so weird.

I don't IIS works one min and another minute it does not. First I could not use the debugger in VS to debug I kept getting a error. Every solution I tried till i disablied the loopback address.

I then could not get the ip address to work even with my firewall off. Then all of a sudden it works and now it seems to work. So hopefully it does not corrupt itself or something.

I am also using the trick with multiple iis on windows xps and I think that was screwing something up(it gave it some name or something that I have to always delete after it creates it then the ip can work).

dparsons · March 18th, 2009, 09:49 PM

Awesome! Let me know if you need anything else!