Cannot view my website

[deck2deck]

I've setup XAMPP on a Windows server because I want to use Joomla, and my understanding is that Joomla works best with Apache.

However, I'm not a programmer and don't really know what I'm doing. I followed the step-by-step instructions for installing XAMPP and that was successful. Then I downloaded and installed Joomla and entered my site content.

I can see my site using http://localhost, and http://127.0.0.1, and also http://mydomainname.com FROM THE COMPUTER THAT IT'S SET UP ON.

However, I can NOT see it from any other computer within my LAN using the domain name, which of course is my goal.

This is a company Intranet and is (or should be) viewable from only inside our network.

IIS is disabled, XAMPP is running so far as I can tell.

I probably shouldn't be using this software since I know so little about it, but I'm thinking that if I can just get through the setup, it will function well going forward because it's not accessible from the 'outside' so I feel like it's pretty safe.

Can anyone point me in the right direction, of what I'm doing wrong? (Please?) I feel like it's probably some simple fix that I'm overlooking, but after struggling with it for several days now and searching the Internet for a solution, I haven't found one. I can't find anyone with exactly the same issue as me.

Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed on this for me!

[Sharley]

Sounds like a network DNS setting that may be not quite right or not even configured at all.

I came across this little 'free for non commercial use' app that you may like to try and see if it helps with your network settings so you perhaps can resolve your issue:
http://www.netsetman.com/index.php?s=nsm
Often setting up and maintaining a network can be a real pain in the .... but at first glance the above app looks interesting.

BTW it does not help if you cross post or post multiple times the same questions in a forum as usually only one of your posts will be answered.

Good luck and best wishes.

[deck2deck]

Thanks Sharley! I appreciate your willingness to help. (I posted on that other thread because I finally found someone with the exact same setup as me-- AFTER I posted this thread, and I knew that posting there would flag those other posters [whereas they might not see this one unless they were actively searching]...) Anyway, just so you know why I did it. It's water under the bridge now I suppose.

But back to my issue -- I don't think it could be DNS because when IIS was running, everything worked and the IIS homepage was accessible everywhere we needed it to be. It didn't stop being accessible under AFTER I installed the XAMPP and Joomla, so I know it's something I did, I just can't figure out what. Thanks for the suggestion though, it was a good one.

Any other ideas of what I may be doing wrong?? One thing I just thought of is that the XAMPP installation is going on the D: drive, whereas normally everything defaults to C:. However that wouldn't explain why a browser on the local machine could find it but others on the LAN could not.

Any ideas for me? Thx in advance!

[deck2deck]

I've solved my problem by following these steps:

1) Turned off Windows Firewall and 2) edited the httpd-xampp.conf file by commenting out the "Deny from all" line.

Now all works as planned and the site is accessible from all locations within our LAN.

I'm a little concerned that the Firewall had to be turned off; in fact all the security built in with XAMPP is turned off because otherwise it won't work in my environment; however the software does come with a warning saying it's not to be used in a production environment but that's what I'm doing anyway, so I guess I'll have to take my chances. It's an internal company Intranet anyway with nothing secure on it, so the only people who might want to get info from it are people who have access to it anyway, so keeping my fingers crossed.

Hope this helps someone else. You never know when someone may have the exact same situation as you.