OPENING YOUR CHATS TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB

By default, your chat server will run on your home network only. If you want to communicate with people within your own home or workplace, there’s no need to open your Pi to the world.

If you think it would be useful to be able to access the chat server from outside your home or office, first set a static IP address for your Pi, if you haven’t already, by following the guide at http://bit.ly/2cCHl8F. Next, you need to obtain a fixed IP address for your router. Your ISP may be able to do this for you for a fee. Alternatively, you can create a hostname that points to your home router through a service such as www.noip.com free of charge. The next step is to open ports 5222 and 5269 on your router. These are the default ports used by XMPP. You need to do this from your router’s configuration page. As the steps are different for each router, we cannot provide instructions here, but you can find information on how to forward ports for most common routers at www.portforward.com.

If you do set up a new domain name or IP address for the Pi, be sure to follow Step 2 of the walkthrough (on page 63), to update the domain name/IP in the “Virtual Hosts” section.

Because people will be connecting over the Internet, you may also want to secure your connection with an SSL certificate. (See “Securing Your Chats” box, over the page.)