I have installed Windows 8 Professional and XAMPP version 1.8.1. Please don't be scared away by the "Windows 8" thing - I'm pretty sure the problem is with Apache, not Windows.
So I installed everything, added a web page, set up port forwarding, and set up the listen port on my httpd.conf. I had to set it up to use a non-standard port (27105) because my ISP reserves port 80. Whatever.
I connected to localhost:27105 and it works fine! I see the web page. When I go to x.x.x.x:27105, it does not work.
So I went to www.canyouseeme.org and checked port 27105. It failed! So I went to Windows Firewall and added inbound exceptions for that port, and now canyouseeme.org reports success on port 27105. When I turn off apache, it fails. So far, so good.
But when I connect to my IP as I mentioned above, it still fails. It just times out.
I have made the following changes to httpd.conf:
1) I changed "Listen 80" to "Listen 27105"
2) I changed "Servername localhost:80" to "Servername [my external ip]:27105" (though I've tried a number of settings here, to no avail)
3) I added a line: "Alias /xampp "C:/xampp/htdocs/xampp"" in the Alias section. This alias works fine on my local connection.
I also changed the default index.php in htdocs to point to my web directory (/htdocs/tam) which contains a drupal installation. As I said, on localhost:27105, this all loads fine.
Other than the changes to httpd.conf, this is right out of the box. I spoke to my ISP and they said that other than the port 80 issue, there's nothing on their end that's stopping me. I've tried putting my computer in the DMZ, and it doesn't help the situation at all, but the fact that canyouseeme.org reports success suggests to me that neither the router nor the windows firewall are at fault. I think the problem is from Apache rejecting external IPs. I just can't figure out how to fix it.
httpd-vhosts.conf, but I'm not quite sure what I'm doing. I tried to follow some instructions I saw online, but it didn't have any effect. I'm not even sure if that's the place I should be looking.
Any advice? I'm pulling my hair out.