creating url to use instead of ip address for aolserver used in project open

Question 1

Well, your question isn't totally clear, but I think what you want is for your website to appear on a URL, such as www.example.com. To do this with AOLserver, you need to edit the /web/server/etc/config.tcl file and edit this line (changing www.example.com to whatever URL you want).

set hostname              www.example.com

Then restart AOLserver. You might also want to set the port to 80. This requires root access, and you may also need to pass -b to AOLserver in your startup script.

Question 2

I understand you are running ]project-open[ on a local server on port 8000 and you want to make this service visible to the Internet, right? There are several steps required:

In your Internet router, you will need to open a port (80 or 8000).
You need to forward incoming traffic on your router to the ]project-open[ server. You can do this using a forwarding rule or similar. Please check your router.
You probably want to setup a URL using DynDns, Dynu or other DNS providers pointing to your Internet router, and changing in case your router's IP is also changing (SOHO router).
In ]po[ you will need to set the redirection URL accordingly. Depending on the port, you may want to set Admin -> Parameters -> "SuppressHTTPPort" to 1

Question 3

Which OS will you be using to access this server? If you will be using a LInux machine you would put the host name into your /etc/host file with the desired name:

For example:

/etc/hosts:

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
192.168.23.108 myprojecturl

The line 192.168.23.108 will provide for you to use myprojecturl to access the site rather than the ip number 192.168.23.108 (from that machine).

From a Windows machine you could do the same. The host file is located in a different plaice ().

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#   127.0.0.1       localhost
#   ::1             localhost
192.168.23.108 myprojecturl

The last line is an example of what you would add to make "myprojecturl" the host name for pulling up the site instead of having to remember the ip numbers to type in.

Question 4

If you're trying to make generated urls be different from the where the server is listening, you need to set the location parameter in the nssock configuration.

in the config fie is a section like this:

ns_section ns/server/${server}/module/nssock
    ns_param   timeout            120
    ns_param   address            $address
    ns_param   hostname           $hostname
    ns_param   port               $httpport

Add in

    ns_param   location    http://my.host.com/

see http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.aolserver/month=20110201