By Wendy_H on

Hi I'm new to both drupal and setting up a website, so I'm not sure how to go about setting a URL of my choice for the web site. Right now it only appear as 'localhost'. I really need help on this as I need to launch the web site within next week. A fast & easy would be really great.

Thank You!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

dman’s picture

dman commented

If you are wanting to work with Drupal paths - to individual pages, see the documentation for 'path'
http://drupal.org/documentation/modules/path

But if you are working on localhost - and haven't yet purchased a domain name and public hosting - you'll have to go and do that first.
A website running on your local machine will not be visible to the rest of the world and will not be accessible though a domain name
(unless you use something like dynDNS but that's even tricker than doing it the normal way.)

It sounds like you will have to look into getting a domain name etc. There are lots of companies that will register for you.
http://www.google.co.nz/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=domain+name+re...

A list of Drupal-friendly hosts is at http://drupal.org/hosting but there are hundreds more.

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

dman’s picture

dman commented

But for VERY fast and easy, it may be best for you to look at Acquia http://www.drupalgardens.com/

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

Wendy_H’s picture

Wendy_H commented

Thank you for the information. So this means that I will hve to first register my website before I can set the URL? Is there no other way around where I can just make it that another name appears instead of 'localhost'? I need to launch the web site only for project purpose. Which means that for the time being, I just need to make it look like a real web page, and not really launch it in a wy that it's available to people outside our project group. An example is that currently, when I access to the contents in my web the url would look : localhost/?q=contentname. I just need it to look : webname/contentname

dharani87’s picture

dharani87 commented

I think you're problem is to setup virtual host in your local machine.
If i'm right means, please check the below link to setup virtualhost in wamp server
http://dharanid.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/setup-virtual-host-in-wamp-server/

dman’s picture

dman commented

To get rid of ?q=contentname, you should Enable clean URLs
That's basic Drupal (and local webserver) setup.

But to change "localhost" into "webname" and have people from other machines find it, you need to either have public hosting and DNS
- or talk to your LAN administrator if you are all on the same network.

If it's just for a temporary demo, and you are on the same network, and you have access to the client machines, you can do a cheap hack to their HOSTS file.
It's described in a few online helps In different places. It's not HARD, but it is techy.

There is a chance that you can get others to find your machine just by entering http://machinename/ but it depends on your LAN. And your router.

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

Wendy_H’s picture

Wendy_H commented

I've tried the Clean URLs option, but it didn't work.
Thanks dman and dharani87 for the help.