Setup Help - Viewing our forum from inside AND outside the network

[ElectricSquid]

I've had the forum up and running for about 6 months now. Minimal issues, you know, the regular newbie webmaster stuff. But this issue I've yet to solve.

I'd like to make it where both personal computers can view the forum, as well as everyone on the open internet. I had this working once for a very short time, so I know it can be hacked into existence. I just can't get it working like that again for some reason.

We have 3 computers on our internal network. One forum server and two personal machines. All three run XpPro Sp2. We are all connected to a common router/hub, then from there to the cable modem.

The hub is configured for I believe it was "static NAT" for my personal machine, so I see the site fine. On the Xp server and my wife's machine, the forum shows, but the theme and functions past the home page do not show or work. Looks just like when you need to do repair_settings.php after a server change.

I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to make this work the way i need. Possibly as simple as can you set the forum (in repair_settings.php) to use http://my_forum.com AND http://192.168.xx.xx at the same time. Or will it just not be that simple

On a side note, when I was running an eval of Windows Small Business Server 2003 and IIS6, I was able to view the site on the server and my personal machine. Just not all 3 on the network.

Any help is appreciated. I am computer literate, so if it's a really technical hack that needs to be done, I'm up for the task.

Thanks all, and I hope ya have a great 4^TH of July

I'm using:
XpPro Sp2
Apache 2.2
PHP 5.2.4
MySQL 4.1
SMF 1.1.5
TinyPortal 0.9.83

[青山 素子]

Set the SMF URL to the outside address and either adjust the router to route that public IP back (most home routers don't have this option), or adjust internal DNS or HOSTS files to return the internal IP.

[ElectricSquid]

I did the hosts file thing, but it doesn't work. I do not know why. It is set up correctly.

[青山 素子]

Did you make sure to restart your browsers? They often keep their own local DNS cache to speed things up. Also, make sure you use the right format in the file.