DESCRIPTION: This tutorial shows you how to make a website on your machine available with a domain name.
VERSION: 1.1 or higher.
NOTE: You must have the Windows .NET runtime installed.
1. Register a domain name with a top level domain name registrar, such as "NameSecure.com", "MyDomain.com" or "GoDaddy.com".
2. Sign up with a hosting company to get a dynamic IP service account. You will need to get the nameserver addresses from this hosting company and give it to your domain registrar so the can register your website to the domain.
3. Ask your domain name registrar to use the nameserver addresses procured from your hosting company. This will initiate a process to distribute the domain registrars nameservers as your authoritative nameservers, and it will take about 72 hours to completely propagate through the internet
4. Download the DNS client Zip, extract the executables and place them in a directory, say "c:\servicesFolder" then install the IP service application with the command line command:
c:\>installutil c:\ServicesFolder\IpService.exe
Note: IpService.exe and HttpMan.exe must be in the same directory
Also note: installutil.exe is a component of the .NET Framework. If it is not a recognized program, it is because its directory is not on your computer's %PATH% system environment variable. Add it to the path, or use the complete path for this command e.g.
c:\>c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\installutil.exe c:\ServicesFolder\IpService.exe
or
c:\>c:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3705\installutil.exe c:\ServicesFolder\IpService.exe
Your path may differ, you can always search for installutil.exe for your actual path.
5. Open Windows Service Control Manager, and open the properties dialogue window for the service just installed named "CME Dynamic Ip Client"
6. Add startup parameters to this service before starting it. The minimum required parameters are the URL, your username and password. Add them with spaces separating them: http://dynamic.zoneedit.com/auth/dynamic.html?zones=myzone.com
/UserName:myUsername
/Password:myPassword
Optional startup parameters:
/Frequency:(number of minutes)
/Log:(Yes|No)
so a complete example for the startup parameters for ZoneEdit.com is:
http://dynamic.zoneedit.com/auth/dynamic.html?zones=myzone.com /username:myAccount /password:myPassword /log:Yes
or if you have multiple zones
http://dynamic.zoneedit.com/auth/dynamic.html?zones=myzone.com,myzone2.com /username:myAccount /password:myPassword /log:Yes
7. Start the service.
Note: If something was missed, such as your password in the startup parameters, you have to add all of the startup options again. Just stopping the service and adding the password start parameter will not work.
Also note: Click the start button from the properties page while the startup parameters are in the window. Do not click OK and then click the play button. The startup parameters will not be saved.
8. View the Windows EventLog for responses from ZoneEdit. You will ONLY get log messages if /Log startup parameter was set to "Yes"
9. You can change the startup type of the service to Automatic, so that it will start at system startup.
10. If you need to change your service parameters, such as update frequency or eventLog logging, you can stop the service, and start it back up with new startup paramters. You can also check %systemroot%\system32\CME\IpService.config to view or change parameters in XML format.
Currently this code is designed to only work with one set of authentication parameters, so you should have all of your ZoneEdit zones under the same account and pay them their reasonable fee if you're over their generous amount of free zones.
My advice is that you set the client to make an update request every 60 minutes. This is a good balance between having your machine available when your IP address changes and making too many unnecessary requests of ZoneEdit's dynamic service
Most ISP's lease you an IP address for 24 hours, and will keep renewing you the same IP address over and over so downtime (even for just an hour) should not be a big concern.