Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

Web Sharing

Using the Sharing pane of System Preferences, you can turn your Mac into a Web site (or server), accessible from the Web browsers of people on your office network, the Internet at large, or both.

This feature assumes, of course, that you’ve already created some Web pages. For this purpose, you can use Web design programs (Apple’s Pages, for example) or save documents out of TextEdit or Word as Web pages. Or you could let Mac OS X build Web pages for you using iPhoto or Image Capture.

After you provide your friends and coworkers with your Mac’s Web site address, they can view your Web pages, graphics, and documents in their own Web browsers. And whenever you’re online, your Web site is also available to anyone on the Internet—but you don’t have to pay a penny to a Web-hosting company.

Tip

Web sharing is also an easy and efficient way to share your Mac files with Windows PCs, either those on your office network or those on the Internet. No special software or translation is required

UP TO SPEED: The IP Address Mess: Port Forwarding

There are so many ways to connect to your Mac from another computer. You can use Web sharing, SSH, file sharing, screen sharing, and so on. They’re easy to use—when you want to connect across your home or office network.

When you want to connect from across the Internet, though, things get complicated fast.

In that case, you need to know your home Mac’s IP address. (IP stands for Internet Protocol.) An IP address is always made up of four numbers separated ...