Here we will discuss how to host your web application in internet. Once the application is built and running on your local machine and the testings are over next step is to take it to internet.
First we need a domain name, like for my blog I use www.myexperimentswithjava.com. To check and book your preferred domain there are lots of service providers are available for example: google apps and godady
Domains are normally sell for 1 year , 2 years or for some fixed terms.
If the domain name what you are looking for is taken by some one. And still you want it you can try for resale, godady facilitate resales of domain. But normally these are expensive. With domains usually service providers give some free email account, which you can use for business purpose like admin@yoursitename.com.
Once you are ready with the domain. Next thing is the Web servers,application server and database server.
Depending upon the load and traffic you expect these three can be in one machine, or individual machine or for each multiple machine. If you expect more than 1000 users are going to access then professional consultancy is required.
If you have decided to host in a share resource (popular name is cloud), you can check for service provider. I had used Amazon elastic cloud, which is pretty good. For dedicated servers you need to buy physical hardware and the set it up to run it. It should have good connectivity and fixed IP. Now next thing is that to set up each layer. I prefer first to install data base, configure security setting backups. And then create application specific objects and load initial data. Then install application server and install the apps. Check the connectivity with database. And some testing with apps. Once the application looks fine, configure the app server to run on port 80. Then by just typing the IP of your application server you should able to access your application on internet. And the application server IP must be a static one.
Next we have to configure our domain name to application server. From domain service provide we will get a control panel to manage the domain. There we can set redirect, configure sub domain etc. In controll panel there will be an option to add MX record. We need to add two entry like for ex:
1) http://myexperimentswithjava.com
2) www.myexperimentswithjava.com
and these entries need to map to application server.
After the configuration it takes some time to work. Normally in a day or two your application can be reachable on internet by your domain.
All the best for your hosting experiments, do post your experience.
