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Two-fold question from someone who has very little server experience.

I've set up a simple IIS8 (Windows 2012) server with a website on it. That works fine.

I can access it outside of my house (yes, this is a SMALL server running in my house), but only if I type in my static IP address. I'd like to get this running using a DNS address so I can use a domain name I've purchased, but I don't know how to do this.

Would I set up a DNS server on my current machine? Would I need a different (separate) machine? If I can put it on my current machine, are there any good instruction websites that detail how it's done for someone with a novice knowledge? I'm a C# programmer, I don't know much about the server side.

Johnny Bones
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    Yes, but don't do it. DNS services are one of those type of things that you want to avoid running yourself unless 1) you have the technical ability to do so and 2) have a good reason to *not* have someone else run it. – EEAA Dec 07 '16 at 17:39
  • This is good info. I'm going to look into that CloudFlare suggestion. – Johnny Bones Dec 07 '16 at 18:27

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Yes you can run DNS on you machine, but most registrars will require at least two IPs for setting up you own nameservers, and it would be wiser to use multiple external DNS servers for redundancy and security issues.

You can purchase a services like DynDNS where you can setup your domain to use their nameservers, and set you records to point to your home IP.

You can also take free CloudFlare account, and setup their nameservers, which I think would be best in your case.

Signup for a free CloudFlare account, and then you can just follow their guide to setup their nameservers on your domain, and then you can add records in their dashboard, and point the domain to your IP.

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/205195708-Step-3-Change-your-domain-name-servers-to-CloudFlare

ralz
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