Web serving from Mac OS 10.4

Okay so there is a folder labeled "Sites" on my Mac and I think I've seen a couple of people use some sort of http server on their macs to serve files.. well, I guess the question is how? is that possible? am I imagining things?

I'd like to be able to get something like that up so that I can access files from within my network from the mac, that'd be nice. Specially since I'm getting a 250GB HDD! wheee!

If you have a network (meaning you are behind a router and use an internal IP address, usually a 192.168.0.X address) you will need to set up port forwarding. Just create your site, put it into the folder, turn on personal web sharing in System Preferences -> Sharing and use the address they provide for you

Cool, well I want it for internal use only, so I dont need to foward it.. thanks tho!

I want to do that too, but can't even find the folder labelled 'sites', could you explain again for the people like me...!
Alex

alexmaccoll said:

I want to do that too, but can't even find the folder labelled 'sites', could you explain again for the people like me...!
Alex

Click to expand...

it's in each user's home folder.

Jordan

Er? I don't even appear to have a folder labelled 'home' - am i being dim?
Alex

Your home folderis the folder with your short username in lowercase letters

In my picture the home folder is ryan

The easy way to host a site on your Mac for internal use is to use the preconfigured Web Server that came with your Mac.

1) If you do not have one already, create a folder called "Sites' under your home directory.
1) Open System Preferences (It should be in your Applications/Utilities folder)
3) Go to the Sharing Preference Pane
4) Select "Personal Web Sharing" and turn it on.

At the bottom of the pane OS X will provide you with the address of your site so you can reach it with other computers. The root site is located at /Library/WebServer and your personal WebSite (reached by ~<username>) is the Sites directory under your Home folder.

How do you change the root site? meaning, I don't want to have /hd/user/sites as my root?

I have multiple sites I test for clients before I post them, so I am looking for a little more flexibility in changing and updating, customizing I guess would be the best word.