DigitalOcean and Domain.com

[LogicalUnit]

Hi everyone,

I have created a droplet on DigitalOcean, and now I want my domain on Domain.com to point to it.

It's just a LAMP stack with a phpBB forum installed to /var/www/html/

I would like my users to see

http://my.domain.com/viewforum.php

instead of the public IP.

What are the minimum settings I need to achieve this? Do I have to add a htaccess file?

Many thanks.

[ZaraByte]

for something like forums.hak5.org you need to make a folder called forums on your server then setup a subdomain to point to that folder I don't use domain.com or digitalocean I perfer ramnode because they offer a dns control panel where you simply you their name servers and it's a lot simpilar to use, but you need to setup a subdomain is what your trying to do.

[LogicalUnit]

The forum is installed to the root of the html directory. I don't want a subdomain, just the main domain.

[ZaraByte]

The forum is installed to the root of the html directory. I don't want a subdomain, just the main domain.

I'm so confused as to how you're havign an issue if you have installed the forum in the the root folder all you need to do is run the install from the installer or install folder you shouldn't need a .htaccess because here's the thing it sounds like you ran the install to install the forum using the IP Address rather than using the domain let's say domain.com gave you a IP of 192.168.1.23 and you when to 192.168.1.23/install well durning your setup your install used the IP rather then the domain which is why you should've used yourdomain.com/install when your were installing the forum.

The other thing you can do is check inside 2 places.

1. Mysql

2. Forum settings.

and change the IP that is set to the domain you own. it will likely kick you out of the forum possibly give an error unless you delete the cookie in your browser after you change it.

Edited February 19, 2016 by ZaraByte

[LogicalUnit]

Okay, let me try to explain. I created the droplet with a standard public IP address. Using the public IP, I connected with SSH, I copied the phpBB files, and I set up the database. I went to my.public.ip.address/install and ran the install script. Everything went fine.

Now, I just want to point my domain to the public IP of the server so users see the domain instead of the public IP.

[cooper]

So you edit the hosts file on your local system to ensure when you say "my.domain.com" it resolves to your IP, then type that into your browser and get... what?

[LogicalUnit]

So you edit the hosts file on your local system to ensure when you say "my.domain.com" it resolves to your IP, then type that into your browser and get... what?

I added xx.xx.xx.xx my.domain.com to /etc/hosts, but "my.domain.com" still resolves to the old webserver, which is what I expected. I'm just trying to figure out what DNS record(s) I need to change to point to the new server.

[ZaraByte]

See what I don't think you understand is that when you installed the forum using the public IP address rather than installing using the domain the forum has the IP address inside the SQL.

The only way to fix that is to;

Follow this guide:

http://www.host1plus.com/tutorials/cms-tutorials/phpbb/phpbb-administration/change-domain-in-phpbb

Edited February 19, 2016 by ZaraByte

[LogicalUnit]

The solution for the domain turned out to be fairly simple in the end: all I had to do was log in to Domain.com and change the nameservers of my domain to ns1.digitalocean.com, ns2.digitalocean.com, and ns3.digitalocean.com.

Then, I logged into my DigitalOcean control panel, and added my domain to the droplet with the "Add a domain" menu item.

ZaraByte, you were correct. The public IP was in the SQL, and I had to reinstall. This wasn't a big deal, as I had already backed up my database and files.

Edited February 20, 2016 by LogicalUnit