DistriFile on Windows with NGINX & PHP

It will take you longer to read this than it will to actually do the install!

Ideally, you would install DistriFile on a dedicated Linux based webserver running within your local network at your office, house, etc., (excellent if you are the one receiving VERY LARGE files on a regular basis--eliminate the extra step downloading from a cloud such as dropbox when people send you files), while having it accessible to the web. Not everyone is familiar with running a webserver, let alone Linux.

I was told by a few people, "If you could make this run on my Windows PC, that would be great!" Guess what... I did! Even some low-cost hosting solutions for websites won't even allow databases or have really old PHP versions, so this is also an alternative.

If this is on a residential internet connection, then people outside your network will be downloading at your upload speed--which may be considerably slower than your download speed. If you are not sending and receiving LARGE FILES, this probably won't be an issue. Also, running a webserver on a residential internet connection may violate your internet provider's terms of service / acceptable use agreement.

This guide and utility is free, but you still must purchase DistriFile. DistriFile isn't free.

Configurations shown may be tweaked further than included/shown, but this will show you how to minimally set up for using DistriFile on a windows machine. Tested on Windows 10 Pro 64 bit. To handle LARGE files, you MUST have a 64bit OS and use the PHP7 64bit! Others may work, but not tested nor recommended. I have created a free and simple way to install NGINX and PHP7. Although the packages included in the download might not be the latest stable release, they are fairly recent. This is intended for people who just want a simple method to start a server on their Windows PC.

Step 1 Install MySQL

Step 2 Install NGINX & PHP

Step 3 Startup Task

Step 4 Setup the Domain DNS

Once you have your server running and is operational, now you must configure your domain to be directed to this PC. We already covered it locally with your HOSTS file. For people outside your network, when they type your domain name, their computer will do a DNS lookup for your domain and then will be directed here. This may seem a little daugnting, but its not that difficult.

If you have a Dynamic IP address from your Internet Service Provider, you will need to use a system such as dyn.org for Dynamic IP addresses. Once you set it up, you would have a "Dyn Updater" running on your PC that monitors your changing IP address and reports it back to dyn. The standard DNS service they provide is $60 a year and is more less rock solid (except when this happened.) There are many other services available, but I have used Dyn for many years and just used it as an example.

If you have a Static IP address you won't need something like Dyn.

Set the name servers by logging into your domain registrar account and set the name servers to the service you are using (ie, dyn.com might be something like ns123.dns.dyn.com, ns456.dns.dyn.com, etc--they will tell you.)
Then wherever your dns name servers are, you will need to point your A-record for the domain to your IP address. A DNS manager like dyn will update this for you automatically, but if you have a static IP, then set the A-record to your IP address. Don't know your IP? Your IP Address is currently: 18.97.14.85

Note, It is possible to have something like distrifile.com A record be one IP address and then a subdomain such as demo.distrifile.com be another IP address.

To reinterate, you need to make sure your domain name you are using will end up getting resolved to your public IP address.

Setup your router to foward Port 80 traffic to this computer's local IP.
So you have your domain pointed to your public IP address, now the router will need to foward all web traffic requests to the right computer. So open your router configuration screen (commonly 192.168.1.1, but could be something else depending on how you set it up).
All routers are different, but you need to find where you can do port fowarding. As you can see here in this Linksys EA3500 router, ports 80 and 443 are set to go to the PC with the IP of 192.160.1.100. This will send all http and https traffic to that computer.
Note, it would also be a good idea to either set a DHCP reservation for this computer with its current IP address, or set the computer's network properties to be a static IP; else you could end up sending the web traffic to another computer on your network upon reboots. DHCP reservation in the router is probably easier for most people.

Step 5 Setup / Configure SSL

Once you have confirmed that your new site can be accessed outside of your network, you might want to configure SSL--especially if you want to use a payment gateway for invoices within DistriFile. This used to be very expensive, but here is a guide to get a VALID and FREE certificate from a relatively new, but awesome service called LetsEncrypt. The only downside is the certificates are valid for 90 days, so you need to renew them every 90 days... its still free though!

On Linux systems, its very easy to renew. On Windows (without running IIS) it is difficult and at the time of this writing, there isn't a great application built that doesn't require many dependencies. SO, let's use a FREE and secure website to generate the certificate called ZeroSSL.

FOR THIS TO WORK, THE DOMAIN YOU CONFIGURED EARLIER MUST BE ACCESSIBLE BY THE PUBLIC!!!

The steps are easy and self-explanatory on their website.

Visit: https://zerossl.com/free-ssl/#crt
Enter your email address if you want a reminder email sent to you to renew.
Enter the domain name EXACTLY like you configured earlier.

If you are renewing, just copy and paste the previous account-key.txt and domain-csr.txt file contents. You'll save them in the /webserver/certs/ directory.

Make sure to use HTTP Verification and check the terms boxes. You'll need to click NEXT at the top right. Each time saving/downloading the content of generated files to your /webserver/certs/ directory and following any instructions provided. Don't worry about the "www" version unless you specifically need it.
On the Verification screen, it mentions creating and placing a file in the /webroot/.well-known/acme-challenge/ folder. These folders are already in the /webserver/public_html/ directory. Just right click, create a new text file with the name it tells you and then the content it provides. DO NOT SAVE WITH AN EXTENSION!!! If it saves with .txt, remove the .txt!

Click the file name and see if it prompts you to download it. IF so, you're probably set.
Click NEXT at the top right. If it can find that file, then it will generate your certificates for you and show you two files to download.

Download the files to the /webserver/certs/ directory and rename them to domain.key and domain.crt (respectively.)

Now, open /webserver/nginx/nginx_custom.conf with a text editor and uncomment (remove the "#") at the beginning of lines

# listen 443 ssl;
# ssl on;
# ssl_certificate C:\webserver\certs\domain.crt;
# ssl_certificate_key C:\webserver\certs\domain.key;

Save and close the file. Now, Double-Click the "stop-start-nginx-php.cmd" in the /webserver/ directory to restart.
Now you should be able to access your new site with https:// and get a green lock with a secure connection!
Note, it is recommended to do this BEFORE you install DistriFile, but you can later if you wish.

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