Creating Your Own Web Server(Know how to convert your PC into a web server using XAMPP).

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Have you ever wondered that you can also set up your own web server and can host web pages. In this post i will teach you how to turn your PC into a Web Server. The first thing we have to do is install the server application in your PC, probably the best application for this purpose is XAMPP, which I am currently using. Click Here to download XAMPP server.

XAMPP comes with built in Apache server, PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, FileZilla FTP server, Mercury SMTP server.

Follow the steps below:-
1. Download and install the xampp server.
2. Open the xampp control panel from desktop or start menu, and start Apache Server.
3. Now go to the Browser and type in localhost or 127.0.0.1(local IP of your system) in the address bar, you will probably get the xampp page which is resided in your PC.

4. Inside xampp control panel click explore or go to the drive where you installed xampp and search for xampp folder. Inside this xampp folder there is a folder named htdocs, inside this you can keep any php or html page which you want to access through browser.
example:- say file named abc.html is kept in htdocs folder. To access this file in the address bar type localhost/abc.html or 12.0.0.1/abc.html.
5. You can access any file or folder inside htdocs. Just specify the actual path after the http://localhost, example a file located inside htdocs->bk->test.html can be accessed by http://localhost/bk/test.html. 


You have set the xampp server for your local PC. i.e you can access any page inside "htdocs" from your PC. So, The only question remain is how to access these pages from another PC .


Lets see How to assign a your public IP address to your xampp sever:-


Before we start go to the browser and type in your public IP.(to see your IP go to cmd and type the command ipconfig, first field is your IP address). You will get some error saying server not found or Access forbidden.


Steps:-
1. Open file httpd-xampp.conf located in C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra.
2. Remove "deny from all" or make it a comment using "#" as shown below, you may get two deny for all the one you should remove is second one(located in line 119).

3. Now restart the server and type in the your public IP address in the browser, you may get xampp home page since it is set default in your htdocs folder  using index.php.
4. Whenever you type your IP address, the page opened will always be index page. Hence, if you want your page to be displayed, whenever you type your IP, the first thing you have to do is delete the old index file(index.html or index.php). And create your own index file it can be html, php, jsp or anything(eg index.html), and edit the contents of the file.
Now you can access your pages from anywhere in the world.


Note:- For desktop phishing you must create your own phishing page and save it as index.html inside htdocs folder or you can create a index.php, which will redirect the page to your phishing page(any name) saved inside htdocs.


Remember:- As anyone can access your server better you provide password security to your xampp and phpMyAdmin. To enable the password:-
Open the browser and type the following address-
localhost/xampp/security/xamppsecurity.php you will be directed to the page where you can set password for xampp directory and MySql.


The only disadvantage is that every time you reconnect your internet your ip address gets changed and practically it is very difficult to remember IP address  which is not static. So, the best thing you can do is have your own Domain name which points to your IP even if it changes.
Click Here to know how to get a free domain name for your IP address.