This will all depend on your ISP. How did you decide what static address to use? If you just picked it out of thin air, you may run into trouble later. Most addresses are owned by someone and you should only be using an address allocated to you by your ISP and they usually charge customers more for a static IP. You could run a website with just a static IP but your visitors would have to access it by typing the number into their browser like this. http://192.168.1.1/index.html You would have to register a domain name if you wanted people to be able to get to your site without memorizing a bunch of numbers. There are many sites that offer registration for a fee (I've seen it for around $10 a year). This is how you get an address like this. http://www.exampledomain.com/ Getting people to visit your website is a different matter entirely. Advertising can be expensive and there are lots of tricks people use to raise their visibility in search engines. Word of mouth can spread quickly if you have interesting content, though. ---Update 9/25/06--- Here are some things you can check - Are you using a cable/dsl router or any kind of hardware or software firewall? (these could be blocking outside connections and are the most likely culprits in my opinion) Is the web server software set up correctly? Did you make the website files publicly readable? (may depend on what OS you're running) Does your ISP allow connections to port 80? (some don't because viruses use it to infect computers) Try this to test if your computer is completely unreachable from external sources or if the DNS just isn't working correctly. Get one of your friends to help from his computer. You need to give him your IP address. Have him open up a command line window (a shell in Linux or command prompt in Windows). Have him type "ping 192.168.1.1" (don't type the quotes and replace 192.168.1.1 with your IP address). If the ping worked, it should look something like this: C:>ping 192.168.1.1 Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=150 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=150 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=150 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=150 Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms C:> If it doesn't work, you'll see something like "destination host unreachable" instead of "bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=150." If it doesn't go through, then the problem is likely on your side. If it does go through, there's a chance the DNS isn't set up properly. Post your results and answers to my questions and I'll update my answer again :)

Okay, there are several issues here and we'll tackle them one at a time: 1. Your IP address; 2. Your need for a domain name; 3. Accessing your server on port 80 from outside; 4. Getting people to find you; (1 and 2 are sort of linked) 1. Your IP Address: It sounds like you've got a dynamic IP address (which can change from time to time) but that doesn't matter (although static is easier albeit more expensive). You can use a dynamic DNS service so when your IP address changes (which it will from time to time), the DNS server's records will be updated so the domain name you choose will point to your new IP address. Simple. Checkout DynDNS. 2. Your Need For A Domain Name: At DynDNS You'll get to choose a domain name, for example, mydomainname.homelinux.net (you get to pick the mydomainname part. You're stuck with a choice of several of the last part like homelinux.net or homenetwork.net etc.) 3. Accessing Your Server On Port 80 From Outside: As far as being able to access your Web server from outside, most ISPs allow inbound connections to port 80. You'll also need to check your 'firewall', modem/filter, pf, whatever to see if it allows inbound connections to port 80. Once you've cleared the path to port 80 through your ISP and your network and directed those packets to the machine doing the serving, if your server is up and running and accepting connections from outside, you should be fine. 4. Getting People To Find You: Now, to let people know you're "Out There". Google offers a free service. Look here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34397&ctx=related and follow their instructions. It's not hard at all. I realize you posted this question some time ago and have probably already solved this problem but I thought I'd reply anyway as it may help others in future with the same/similar problems. Good luck and remember, it's all fun.