Online Home Poker (5 Viewers)

[BearMetal]

But now I cannot log in to the PM software from my laptop. I tried going directly to the IP address as I have been doing, and then tried going directly to the domain name. Bot attempts resulted in this message. Going back over previous posts now to see if I messed a step.

Looks like you're using SSL now! Great! Remember:

• You previously punched holes in AWS and Windows for port 8087 (or maybe even 80). But now you need port 443, which is the standard port for https.
• Don't forget to use https:// instead of http:// when calling your server

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Looks like you're using SSL now! Great! Remember:

• You previously punched holes in AWS and Windows for port 8087 (or maybe even 80). But now you need port 443, which is the standard port for https.
• Don't forget to use https:// instead of http:// when calling your server

Yes, I changed the port to 443. Sorry about the horrible screen shot. I think it is because it's on the remote server screen.

Here is the address I'm using. Do I have to add the PW onto the end of the address like I was previously?

https://www.texasfloodpokerclub.com/?SitePassword=****************

Edit: getting a different error message now. It just says FORBIDDEN.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

I think I forgot to punch the holes needed to use port 443. Going back to find your instructions for that.

 

[BearMetal]

I think I forgot to punch the holes needed to use port 443. Going back to find your instructions for that.

Forbidden is wrong. I think your IP address that you have associated with your DNS name is wrong. It's not owned by Amazon; the 66.96.x.x IP ... that's not an EC2 IP address.

Edit: remember that your DNS address must match your certificate and must be paired with your EC2 address. For example:

• You purchased www.texasfloodpokerclub.com and validated that you own it. You were issued a certificate for www.texasfloodpokerclub.com. Not poker.texasfloodpokerclub.com or anything else.
• When you associated your EC2 IP address with your site, you MUST associate it www.texasfloodpokerclub.com. The "www." part is crucial as this is your subdomain that you paid for.

www.texasfloodpokerclub.com is registered to a weirdo 66.96.x.x IP.
texasfloodpokerclub.com is registered to a 3.139.x.x address ... this is the correct IP address for Amazon.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Forbidden is wrong. I think your IP address that you have associated with your DNS name is wrong. It's not owned by Amazon; the 66.96.x.x IP ... that's not an EC2 IP address.

Edit: remember that your DNS address must match your certificate and must be paired with your EC2 address. For example:

• You purchased www.texasfloodpokerclub.com and validated that you own it. You were issued a certificate for www.texasfloodpokerclub.com. Not poker.texasfloodpokerclub.com or anything else.
• When you associated your EC2 IP address with your site, you MUST associate it www.texasfloodpokerclub.com. The "www." part is crucial as this is your subdomain that you paid for.

www.texasfloodpokerclub.com is registered to a weirdo 66.96.x.x IP.
texasfloodpokerclub.com is registered to a 3.139.x.x address ... this is the correct IP address for Amazon.

Where do I fix this? At Domain.com?

 

[BearMetal]

Where do I fix this? At Domain.com?

Let's assume that you purchased a certificate for www.texasfloodpokerclub.com. This means that you now need to associate that "www" subdomain with your EC2 IP Address. Yes, you do that from whoever you registered your domain with. It should be a simple change.

For me, I used Google Domains, so I just go to my domain, I go to DNS, and then I add a new "A" record. "A" records basically say:

• "www" for domain texasfloodpokerclub.com should point to IP address 3.139.x.x

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

@BearMetal I have a lot of "A" records at domain.com that point to an IP address that starts with 66.96.... I was told that the only one I needed to change was the "@" record. Here's a screen shot from my DNS records.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Was that bad information? Do I change them all to the correct IP address? Do I need to add one call "www?"

 

[BearMetal]

@BearMetal I have a lot of "A" records at domain.com that point to an IP address that starts with 66.96.... I was told that the only one I needed to change was the "@" record. Here's a screen shot from my DNS records.

View attachment 653229

Nope! "@" record means "no record" which means your domain WITHOUT a subdomain (ie texasfloodpokerclub.com without the "www").

You just need to add an "A" record for whatever you purchased your certificate for. If you purchased it for "www" then add an "A" record for that.

 

[BearMetal]

Was that bad information? Do I change them all to the correct IP address? Do I need to add one call "www?"

No, those other "A" records are for other services (like FTP, mail, etc). It's probably fine to delete them, but they don't hurt anything. Just add the 1 "A" record which matches your certificate. Then poke the holes for 443.

BTW, since you have the RIGHT IP for https://texasfloodpokerclub.com, we can see that the firewall isn't done yet. It's blocking that port right now.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

So add this record?

 

[BearMetal]

So add this record?

View attachment 653234

Yep! That will have https://www.texasfloodpokerclub.com -> 3.139.x.y (your IP)

Then you just need the firewall opened up on both the AWS side (Network Security Group) and on Windows (Windows Firewall) for port 443. And you're done.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Yep! That will have https://www.texasfloodpokerclub.com -> 3.139.x.y (your IP)

Then you just need the firewall opened up on both the AWS side (Network Security Group) and on Windows (Windows Firewall) for port 443. And you're done.

Thanks. Domain will take several hours to process the DNS change. In the meantime, I did already look at the AWS security group, and a record called https for port 443 is already there.

For the firewall, do I edit the previous record that I created for ports 8087-8088 or add a new record just for port 443?

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

 

[BearMetal]

For the firewall, do I edit the previous record that I created for ports 8087-8088 or add a new record just for port 443?

Do it all in one: 80,443,8087-8088

You can use that format

 

[Rakrul]

It's working now, congrats @TX_Golf_N_Poker!

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

SUCCESS!!!!!

Thank you @BearMetal and @Rakrul too! Up and running and the site is secure!

I almost hate to ask anything else, but.... What I would like to do next is have a homepage on my server where my players go first. This page would have information about my poker club, have links to some documents, photos and logos, etc. Also a place to send me an email to request membership in the actual group. Then there would be a button to click that would take them to the Poker Mavens site to play.

One of the things I don't like about the link I share with my players is that the password to the site is embedded right in the link. That seems a little unsafe to me. Is there any way around that?

 

[cpiaaq]

You can do that, share a link to https://www.texasfloodpokerclub.com and the users will be prompted for the Site Password. edit: There's no way to have a site password without it being plaintext in the URL after login.

 

[Rakrul]

SUCCESS!!!!!

Thank you @BearMetal and @Rakrul too! Up and running and the site is secure!

I almost hate to ask anything else, but.... What I would like to do next is have a homepage on my server where my players go first. This page would have information about my poker club, have links to some documents, photos and logos, etc. Also a place to send me an email to request membership in the actual group. Then there would be a button to click that would take them to the Poker Mavens site to play.

One of the things I don't like about the link I share with my players is that the password to the site is embedded right in the link. That seems a little unsafe to me. Is there any way around that?

Nothing you can do on your end, it has to be fixed by the software. Edit: The upside is you can bookmark with password to avoid typing it in every time.

As for the web-server, I'd suggest using Wordpress. I'm running my own WordPress installation on a linux server, but it can just as well run on your AWS installation. However, there's a couple of considerations here;
1) Security. WordPress is very popular and thereby popular for hackers. Your site might not be interesting enough to hack, but hackers love access to a free AWS machine. So hosting the poker server and Wordpress on the same server might not be optimal.
2) User friendly. Installing WP, and maintaining it might not be what you want to spend your time on. Granted, it's not a whole maintaining once it's up but still.
3) Longevity. If your webpage will live longer than your AWS server (i.e. you find AWS too much work/costly to keep), you'll have to move your webpage to another server. There's tons of articles on how to, but you still have to do it.

So if you host on WP cloud solution it's free for a basic package and you never have to move. Not sure if you can assign the domain name to it though.

I started looking at different solutions due to the security aspect of WP, but gave up. There are so many free resources available for WP, like articles, how to, themes, plugins, and so on. You can take a look at mine at (it's in Norwegian though) if you want. PM me, I don't want it public as I have the teams link there.
I'm about as artistic as a retarded monkey, but didn't spend many hours on setting up that page. It was basically one night installing it on a Raspberry Pi and testing if WP was the path I wanted to go for, the next night I installed it on my Linux server, and tested some themes. The last night I started making content, changed the theme as I changed my mind on design and that's it. I actually spent another night fiddling with the damn google calendar but that's a google thing, not WP plugin's fault. And of course endless hours tinkering and refining after that.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Nothing you can do on your end, it has to be fixed by the software. Edit: The upside is you can bookmark with password to avoid typing it in every time.

As for the web-server, I'd suggest using Wordpress. I'm running my own WordPress installation on a linux server, but it can just as well run on your AWS installation. However, there's a couple of considerations here;
1) Security. WordPress is very popular and thereby popular for hackers. Your site might not be interesting enough to hack, but hackers love access to a free AWS machine. So hosting the poker server and Wordpress on the same server might not be optimal.
2) User friendly. Installing WP, and maintaining it might not be what you want to spend your time on. Granted, it's not a whole maintaining once it's up but still.
3) Longevity. If your webpage will live longer than your AWS server (i.e. you find AWS too much work/costly to keep), you'll have to move your webpage to another server. There's tons of articles on how to, but you still have to do it.

So if you host on WP cloud solution it's free for a basic package and you never have to move. Not sure if you can assign the domain name to it though.

I started looking at different solutions due to the security aspect of WP, but gave up. There are so many free resources available for WP, like articles, how to, themes, plugins, and so on. You can take a look at mine at (it's in Norwegian though) if you want. PM me, I don't want it public as I have the teams link there.
I'm about as artistic as a retarded monkey, but didn't spend many hours on setting up that page. It was basically one night installing it on a Raspberry Pi and testing if WP was the path I wanted to go for, the next night I installed it on my Linux server, and tested some themes. The last night I started making content, changed the theme as I changed my mind on design and that's it. I actually spent another night fiddling with the damn google calendar but that's a google thing, not WP plugin's fault. And of course endless hours tinkering and refining after that.

Just looking at their page, half of what they offer I already have. Hosting and a domain. And yeah, not too keen on having something that might invite hackers. I don't want my site published to the whole world. I just want to have a page to send friends and potential poker players to. Then a jumping off point into the Poker site. Right now when I invite someone to join our game, I send them a PDF file that I keep with all the details. I was thinking it would be cool to just have that posted on a website. Maybe I'll buy a "web page design for dummies" book.

 

[Rakrul]

Yeah, I was in the same boat. I'm sure there's tons of hits if you google "installing wordpress on aws with windows".
WP (regardless of where it's hosted) started out for bloggers (but is so much more now) so it's perfect for posting "news", like last week's results, changes and so on.

 

[BearMetal]

SUCCESS!!!!!

Thank you @BearMetal and @Rakrul too! Up and running and the site is secure!

I almost hate to ask anything else, but.... What I would like to do next is have a homepage on my server where my players go first. This page would have information about my poker club, have links to some documents, photos and logos, etc. Also a place to send me an email to request membership in the actual group. Then there would be a button to click that would take them to the Poker Mavens site to play.

One of the things I don't like about the link I share with my players is that the password to the site is embedded right in the link. That seems a little unsafe to me. Is there any way around that?

If it's just static HTML & JavaScript that you want to serve up, Poker Mavens has a way of serving files out of a directory:

Anything in the "c:\poker\web" folder here is served by your web server. So, your players go to https://www.texasfloodpokerclub.com to play, but they could go to https://www.texasfloodpokerclub.com/welcome.html if you wrote a welcome.html page and dropped it in there. You could also have this welcome.html page wrap a wordpress page.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Yeah, I was in the same boat. I'm sure there's tons of hits if you google "installing wordpress on aws with windows".
WP (regardless of where it's hosted) started out for bloggers (but is so much more now) so it's perfect for posting "news", like last week's results, changes and so on.

If it's just static HTML & JavaScript that you want to serve up, Poker Mavens has a way of serving files out of a directory:

View attachment 653379

Anything in the "c:\poker\web" folder here is served by your web server. So, your players go to https://www.texasfloodpokerclub.com to play, but they could go to https://www.texasfloodpokerclub.com/welcome.html if you wrote a welcome.html page and dropped it in there. You could also have this welcome.html page wrap a wordpress page.

Would they be able to access that even if they are not yet members of the group and don't have the site password? Also, remember from all the dumb questions I've been asking, I'm not a programmer. Is HTML and JavaScript something I can learn fairly easy? Tools like Wordpress are represented as being beginner level.

I did some searching on google and was wondering if this might be an option? Looks like it's should cost almost nothing, it's already part of AWS, and says it's beginner level easy.

https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/host-static-website/

 

[Rakrul]

That's just how to host the page/web-server. You still need to create and upload the content, and no script/programming is allowed.
If you have your pdf-page as a docx file or similar, Word can save that file as html I believe.

 

[BearMetal]

Would they be able to access that even if they are not yet members of the group and don't have the site password?

Yes, only the play site is protected by a password. If you drop some static html pages in there, you don't need a password to see them.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Hey all, new dumb question,

Tonight I will have a tournament running, but for the first time I am going to be away from my house. I hate assuming, but I assume I am not going to have any issues accessing the Poker Mavens console if I need to, correct? In other words, will I be able to pull up the remote desktop connection while my laptop is logged into a different WiFi than from my home?

Only reason I ask is I have read about (but don't understand how) granting remote admin rights. But that is for another person, not me in a remote location, correct?

 

[BearMetal]

Hey all, new dumb question,

Tonight I will have a tournament running, but for the first time I am going to be away from my house. I hate assuming, but I assume I am not going to have any issues accessing the Poker Mavens console if I need to, correct? In other words, will I be able to pull up the remote desktop connection while my laptop is logged into a different WiFi than from my home?

Only reason I ask is I have read about (but don't understand how) granting remote admin rights. But that is for another person, not me in a remote location, correct?

You'll be fine, especially if it's the same laptop. The same way you connect now will work from anywhere that has internet.

 

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

You'll be fine, especially if it's the same laptop. The same way you connect now will work from anywhere that has internet.

That will work for tonight, but eventually I would like to access from my android phone and tablet. Is that possible too? I have installed remote desktop. But do I need to create a new RDP file for each device? I installed RDC on my devices, but I can't open the same RDP file on them that I do from my laptop.

 

[Rakrul]

I would suggest the remote admin page in Mavens instead, especially from a phone. RDP from a phone will not effective.

 

[OKChips]

Anyone moved past their first free year of AWS? curious what the rate will look like....

 

[BearMetal]

Anyone moved past their first free year of AWS? curious what the rate will look like....

Yep. Depending on what your needs are and if you're willing to purchase reserve instances up front, it's about $120 a year.