how to serve website with apache over the internet? - django

Question

I have somehow managed to serve both my project app and its static files on the apache. But only I can see my webpage, by typing localhost and by my IPv4 address. And I can't see my webpage from the other's computer. In my http.conf, it is Listen 80. I don't know much about this. I even registered on a free dynamic DNS provider, but even from that url I can only see It works message. I really suck at these things. Please guide me here. Thank you.
snippet of http.conf:
WSGIScriptAlias / C:/Users/robin/web/etc/etc/etc/wsgi.py
WSGIPythonPath C:/Users/robin/web/etc/etc
<Directory C:/Users/robin/web/etc/etc>
<Files wsgi.py>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Files>
</Directory>
#Alias /robots.txt /path/to/mysite.com/static/robots.txt
#Alias /favicon.ico /path/to/mysite.com/static/favicon.ico
AliasMatch ^/([^/]*\.css) C:/Users/robin/web/etc/etc/static/styles/$1
#Alias /media/ /path/to/mysite.com/media/
Alias /static/ C:/Users/robin/web/etc/etc/static/
<Directory C:/Users/robin/web/etc/etc/static>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Directory>
#<Directory /path/to/mysite.com/media>
#Order deny,allow
#Allow from all
#</Directory>
WSGIScriptAlias / C:/Users/robin/web/etc/etc/etc/wsgi.py
<Directory C:/Users/robin/web/etc/etc/etc>
<Files wsgi.py>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Files>
</Directory>

Answer 1

You need to do the following:
1. Ensure that the server is publicly accessible
To do this you need to ensure
Port 80 is routed through your router to the servers internal IP address. This is called NAT. If you are using a Cisco router you can see the instructions here.
Any firewalls are configured not to block the traffic on port 80. If you are using Linux you would most likely need to configure iptables. If you are using Windows you can do this on the windows firewall. If you are using a third party firewall you need to search google to find out how to do it.
You need to ensure you are using the public ip address to connect. You can find this by using a website such as http://whatismyipaddress.com/
2. Setup the virtual hosts on apache
The reason you are only seeing the "It Works" message is because Apache is pointing to the default web root on the server for that domain name. To fix this, you need to setup a virtualhost for the domain name, and point it to the root directory of your application. Instruction for this can be found here.
Under for virtual hosts in your apache config, you could add something like this:
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email]#[address].com
DocumentRoot [directory root]
ServerName [registered domain name without www eg: something.com]
ServerAlias *.[registered domain name without www]
</VirtualHost>
The "NameVirtualHost *:80" might already exist, so search the config first. Usually it is in there and commented out by default, so you might just need to remove the #.
Note: ALWAYS backup the config by copying the contents to another file. Also restart apache after you make the adjustment.