18 Sep: Running PWS on other ports for dns2go

"Some users who are hobbiests may wish to use PWS on a port other than 80 in combination with a domain name from dns2go.com so they can show off their ASP pages to friends without having to buy hosting which caters for ASP and Access or SQL.

The port on PWS can be changed:
1. First Stop PWS or at RUN type C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\inetsrv\pws.exe /stop
[If PWS is running it the change may not take effect]
2. At a DOS prompt type the following
[Location of mdutil.exe] C:\mdutil.exe SET W3SVC/1/Serverbindings ":8080:"
3. Start PWS or at RUN type
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\inetsrv\inetinfo.exe -e w3svc
4. In webbrowser type http://localhost:8080 to verify change to port 8080
5. You may or may not have to restart your computer for the change to take affect.

(This is from Harley on the microsoft.public.win98.pws4 newsgroup)

Some of the ramifications are:

1. the PWS website button doesn't work
2. the PWS publish button doesn't work
3. relative URLs seem not to work because they are based on http://localhost rather than on http://localhost:8080

To fix the relative urls I changed line 180 in init.asp to:

sBaseServer += '/8080/' + sURLOffset [ i ];

by inserting the :8080 in front of the /.

This stuff might be a bit sensitive because one reason that people may wish to change their port on pws to other than 80 is because their ISP has it blocked and they may wish to check their terms of service to ensure that they aren't breaching them.

When registering for dns2go they would use the new port number on the registration form if they are advised that port 80 is blocked when they try to register using port 80.

If they try using port 80 and don't get the message it is blocked then they probably don't need to change the port.

You can probably express all this a lot better than I can if you decide to use it. [No I can't! James]

No need for reply or acknowledgement. [Too late! James]

Just sent for what it's worth as an appreciation of the free download."

Thanks again Paul.