Quick question

[Spearball]

I have a really simple question thats been bugging me. I have already tried to host a website but always with problems. I asked some of my friends to try and visit the website but some of them couldn't view the page and for some it worked. Why is it that some were not able to see the webpage? Take this website for example, www.worldofwarcraft.com where anyone in the world can view it and it works everytime. I don't understand.

Thanks

[Statica]

Generally speaking, it could be one of 2 things ..
a) Cannot get to the site -
Are you hosting the site yourself or are you using a web host? If its yourself, then make sure that your webserver is configured right .. your network devices are designed to allow in the correct port calls and your ISP isn't blocking out requests to your site. If you are using a web host and people cant view the site, then its time to check the uptime of the host itself. Go through their service logs to see if they have been experiencing issues and if they are doing any maintenance. Remember that with webhosts, you get what you pay for - the cheaper the host, the likelihood is greater that the uptime is not where it should be or that they dont troubleshoot issues quickly. Consider going with more reputable hosting companies.

b) If it's an issue of your site not rendering properly for some people then its time to ask the specifics of the browser etc for the people it works vs those it doesnt. Then go back through your code to see if you've written something that doesn't render correctly on some browsers. Are you using a plugin or an applet that requires a helper app (quicktime, java etc etc) that might not be on the machines where it doesn't show up.

Check your webhosts site logs as well to see if there are any errors being logged .. are people coming to the wrong URL etc.

[mairving]

Where are you hosting it from, your house, a host?

[ghost2003]

A little more info would help.
How was the site hosted (home server, hosting company, etc.)?
How long after setting up the site did they try to connect?
How was your friend connecting (ip, personal domain, free domain, hosting company's address)?
What happened when they could not connect (Can't find proper address through dns, cant connect to server, etc.)?

Usualy this problem is caused due to DNS propagation. But this should only happen if the domain was cached by an ISP's dns servers before the records changed.

[Spearball]

Yea sry about that i kinda posted and i was missing the critical info. Anyway what i did was try to host my own blog using wordpress and hosted it with xampp (apach and mysql). Then i used a free www.dyndns.com url pointing to my static ip. Im hosting it myself here its no hosting company.

[Stuey]

Were they all using the same browsers? For example, was IE going through but not FF?

[Spearball]

Humm if i recall they most have firefox but i just tried connecting through a public computer using IE7 and it doesn't load up. Says page cannot be found.