Web Sharing set up question

First... I thank you in advance for your time and efforts on this issue that I have.
=========
I have 4 macs each hooked up to separate TVs and running Plex for content serving and so far have been able to adequately manage the lot of them. I can remote Admin from my mac and I've done a good job with setting permissions and access as far as file/printer sharing goes.
But I haven't been able to get the web Sharing features working.
It seems easy enough... turn on the web sharing in preferences and point the browser to the correct IP address.
When I do that I am able to reach the web page located in the top webserver/documents folder... or the ones in the users site folder from any of the locally networked machines from the IP addys that can be found in the websharing preference pane.
But from off site... over the net... no one can get access at all... "cannot locate server" ... and "server time out" messages appear.
These are all new Mac Minis and a new Mac Book running Snow Leopard and they seem to network rather well for me locally so I'm thinking my router is blocking????
I have the firewall turned off and it reads that all incoming connections are allowed.
What am I not setting/looking at properly? what need I do to allow someone to get access to my websharing folder and view a web page or download a file? Or to get access to the htdocs folder in MAMP/
I tried installing MAMP and that all seems to be up and running but I have the same issue... local machines can access the files but off site machines can not. grrrr .... (i love macs)

For anyone else who has issues with setting up web sharing.
I found my solusion first by getting an Airport extreme base station and then by following the instructions posted by Thomas and I'll paste part of it here for you but there is a link you'll need to follow for the main instructions.
Thomas says the following:
===============
You can't just access machines on your home network from the outside world. Your typical home internet connection has one single dynamic IP address assigned to it. Depending on your network setup, that IP address might be your wireless router, wired router or cable/DSL modem, and that device takes responsibility for routing traffic to machines on the local network. On the local network, machines will have IP addresses like 10.0.1.1 (if you're using an Apple AirPort base station), which are completely meaningless to the outside world.
I posted some instructions for how to get access to a specific machine on my home network from outside here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9436505&#9436505
Of course, as I mention on that thread, if you have different hardware, this method may not work for you. Also note that you should not expect to host a website this way. Web access for your own use is one thing, but your internet service provider will shut you down if you try to host a public web site over your home network connection.
===========
And one thing that I did learn unfortunately is that NO... you can't route the web sharing feature to more than one machine at a time. Kinda messes things up. At least for my mac mini it did... had to delete my user account and replace it to get back to normal after trying to set up web sharing on two machines.
Also.. the settings changed both in the System prefs as well as for the airport are easy enough to reverse and set back your previous settings should you want to.

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  • Personal Web Sharing - Don't have permission to access...

    Hi,
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    braintrino,
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  • Help needed with Personal Web Sharing

    I need a little help. My goal is to set up my Apache server to allow people on the Internet access web pages served from my Mac. But I can't seem to get it working.
    Here's what I've done so far:
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    4. I am using a cable modem connected to a Linksys WRT54G router, and I have configured the WRT54G to forward port 80 to my Mac's IP address (192.168.1.xx).
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    Charlie:
    Thanks for the tip about the W3C HTML Markup Validation Service. Answers to your questions are in CAPS. And, thanks for any help you can provide.
    ===================
    1. Can the Mac ping the Windows computer and vice versa? YES Are you sure the Mac is able to reach the Internet outside your LAN, can you browse the web from it? YES, I HAVE A WORKING, HIGH-SPEED CONNECTION TO THE INTERNET FROM MY MAC.
    2. What happens if you use the WAN IP address in Safari on the Mac and try to load the web page? Does it still time out? YES. WHEN I PUT THE ADDRESS I RECEIVED FROM http://checkip.dyndns.org/ INTO THE URL FIELD IN SAFARI, IT TIMES OUT. WHEN I DO THE SAME THING USING USING THE LOCAL LAN IP ADDRESS OF MY MAC, IT WORKS PERFECTLY.
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  • PERSONAL WEB SHARING - ANYONE HELP!!!

    My goal is to setup personal web sharing for my mac mini. My intent was to check out my web page design from the internet (just because I could), but now it's changed to wanting to prove that I can conquer this (for my own pride).
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    I know it may seem like this issue has been answered, but this forum seems to be the closest place for me to report on my very similar situation and see if there is a solution, if not the same one offered by Charlie, above, perhaps some other insight into the nature of this problem, and its resolution.
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    I use Adelphia Communications as my Internet Service Provider, and I get a dynamic Internet address, which has not changed since I began this process and which, says Adelphia tech support, is not designed to change until and unless I disconnect from their system. I have a small home network, hard-wired and connected through LinkSys BESFR41 router. I created a test home page with a couple of links; the web pages are located in the default ~username/Sites folder.
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    • Firewall Preferences
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    • Router Port Forwarding setup
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    jmb
    PowerMac G4 Mirrored Doors. iMac G5.   Mac OS X (10.4.6)   2 GB RAM. 2 hard drives. SuperDrive; ComboDrive. LaCie FW DVD. LaCie FW 250GB.

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