URL problems!

[mice]

what if I want to run the SMF forum on my own connection, from behind my router? how do I set things up to get that to work? I mean, if I use my external IP as the forum URL then everyone but me will be able to connect and if I use my internal IP, then I'll be pretty much alone in there so I wonder, is there any way I can set this up so people on both sides of my router can connect and use my forum?

thanks!

oh, one more thing, I changed the forum URL from internal to external and now I can't log in and change it back again is there any way I can access the forum now without re-installing the whole thing

[[Unknown]]

You can use repair_settings.php to change URLs, and such.  What is repair_settings.php?

Why can't you access the forum from your external IP?  I can from mine... what sort of low-grade router are you using ?

-[Unknown]

[mice]

when I first installed the SMF forum (using 0.0.0.0/forum/index.php as forum URL) everything worked just fine. But I wanted people from outside my low-grade NetGear router to be able to connect as well. When they do, they end up being directed to 0.0.0.0 etc. witch is their localhost. So I changed the forum URL from internal to external. Now everyone but me can connect, because I am being directed to my external IP, ending up nowhere. I managed to get in again by manually changing back the settings in settings.php though. I really don't know why I can't  access the forum by using my external IP, actually I have never been able to connect to anything located behind my router by using the external IP, I only end up getting my routers login dialog. If I add a port to the IP (xx.xx.xx.xx:1010) I end up nowhere. My browser just keeps on searching for something out there. So now I wonder if there's a way I can set this up so people on both sides of my router can connect?

Mice

[Jerry]

for your router, did you set the port forwarding on your router configuration to forward the desired ports to your computer?

[mice]

yes Jerry, the ports I'm using are all being forwarded to my computers local IP address. So people on the outside can actually connect and use the forum. The problem is that people on the inside (behind my router) can't. Well, they can connect if they're using my computers local IP address, but the moment they start hitting links and buttons, they end up being pointed to forum locations containing my external IP. They're being pointed to my ISP, witch probably kicks them back to where they came from Using a redirector service doesn't help either, that's just a short delay on their way to nowhere

Actually, I don't think this problem has anything to do with the SMF software, more a router/network issue witch probably will affect most people trying to run a forum on a computer located behind a router.

Mice

btw, I took a look at your forum. Great work!

[[Unknown]]

I suggest you use a hostname service, such as www.dyndns.org.  Then, in your lmhosts file (search on Google, there's a lot of information on it .) or elsewhere, you can have it so, for your computer, that same hostname points to a different IP.

For example:

outside -> thisisme.dnsalias.net -> 123.45.67.89
inside -> thisisme.dnsalias.net -> 127.0.0.1

Then it would work from both places .

-[Unknown]

[mice]

hi!- problem solved thanks for help and suggestions

I only had to enable IP loopback in my low-grade NetGear router

Mice

btw, using a hostname service didn't solve anything - like I said in my second post, that's just a short delay on ppl's way to nowhere and the lmhosts thing appeared to be pretty tricky to set up on a Mac.