Turning my Macbook Pro into a server

Question

I have read over and over (MacX -Missing Manual) on how to let people access your computer as server or FTP sever,Host my own sites etc... No matter what I try nothing works.
My goal is to have files on my Mac and let my band members access them when thy need them then reload them to my comuter when they finish their modifications. We were using my .Mac acct. but we are working with .WAV files and they are on the larger size.
I also want to host my own .coms that I already have from my Mac.
Can anybody direct me to the proper setup info?

Answer 1

Not sure that this will work:
firstly the personal web sharing thing is only for
computers on a network or intranet not across the
internet.
That's not true - I used it for years to host my own website. The button in System Preferences simply issues the command 'sudo apachectl start' to start the Apache webserver.
Anyway, to host your website, you'll need to not only turn on Personal Web Sharing (the relevant firewall ports on the G5 should open up automatically) on the G5, but you'll need to set up your router as well.
Hopefully there's some place on your router where it shows you its WAN IP, i.e., the address that it has for the "outside world". That's the address that any visitor would need to connect to. Of course, this could change if you have a dynamic IP connection with your ISP.
The router also needs to be configured to forward traffic to your G5 if that traffic arrives on port 80 (the standard port for http traffic), and maybe on port 443 (for https connections). This may be called port forwarding or virtual servers or something like that, depending on whose router you have. You'll also need open up those ports on the router's built-in firewall.
If you want to use "proper words" in the URL, you need a domain name. Preferably, you'll have a static IP address to use with this, or if you don't, you can use a service such as DynDNS.
This is the setup in a nutshell. Work with getting this configured and see if someone can successfully connect to your server from the outside.
Feel free to post back with questions as much as you like. It will work; I had my old PM9600 (running OS X) operating as a webserver/mailserver for several years.