hosting issues?

However the published sites do not show up when accessing the site from the outside,

This is a hostname/network issue — specifically, how you have (or have not) configured the hostname you used to install WordPress to be accessible from “outside”.

Before I can provide any assistance, please clarify the following:

1) What specific URL do you use to access the functioning WordPress site on the computer where you installed XAMPP?

2) What is “outside”? Another computer in your LAN? Or from the public Internet? Something in-between? And are you using the same URL as in #1 above?

Seeing a different website (XAMPP landing page) suggests you’re not using the same URL for your WordPress site in the two instances above. Note that this site address is stored in the WordPress database, and that’s the one you must use. If you used localhost, then that’s your first problem as this will never work from “outside”.

Standing by.

Hi George,

thank you for you reply! Please find the answers to your follow-up questions below:

1. I am currently using localhost in the URL so: “localhost/NAME/wp-admin/index.php”.
2. by “outside” I meant from the public internet, I am not using the same URL as in 1).

Okay thank you for your explanation. I did already try to change the URL inside the wordpress settings to something other than localhost but this leads to me not being able to even use wordpress anymore, im guessing that the paths dont match so im logged out. Only way for me to continue to use wordpress was by changing the values back to localhost via the mysql database.

Do I have to install wordpress anew? I was under the impression that even if wordpress is installed using localhost, it’s an option to later change this, is this not the case?

I tried again to take out the localhost from the “siteurl” setting in wordpress, this leads to me being logged out and only after changing the “siteurl” value again via the database can I use wordpress again.

Even with changing the DocumentRoot Directory value inside the httpd.conf to point directly to the website-folder which contains my wordpress installation I cannot use wordpress anymore. With this change at least I am getting the message “the content for this page is empty or has not been saved. Please edit this page and ‘Save’ the contents builder.” So it seems like its pointing towards the right website at least, but now I also cannot use wordpress anymore.

I also tried changing the wordpress setting to not contain localhost in combination with the DocumentRoot Directory value pointing directly to the website folder but also did not get a positive result.

I’m sure I am misunderstanding something basic or made a stupid error during setup or something, it’s my first time doing this, please bear with me.
In any way, thank you very very much for your help George! It is very much appreciated!

Hey @mynameiscontra, in line with the questions Geroger asked you, what URL are you using to access your site from outside? You need to own the domain name to configure it on your site. Have you purchased some hosting to serve it to the public? I’m asking because first, you need the hosting that keeps your site running, and second, you need a URL to associate with your site. It is not usual to serve a website from a personal computer since you would have to leave it on and running all the time for the site to be available. There are dedicated machines for this kind of work, and there might be networking issues that become more complicated if you don’t have a static IP (domain name translates to IPs in the end). This is also often resolved pretty easily by a hosting provider; they usually guide you through publishing the site with their services.

You seem to be doing it entirely manually, so you will learn a lot in the process. Many of us have asked ourselves those questions at some point, so if you persevere, you will surely be able to publish your site successfully. For an extra overview, try searching for a guide on “how to publish a WordPress site” or something similar.

I hope that sheds some light! Let us know how it goes.