With a greater need to be connected and with the need to access your data, apps and computer from multiple devices, we are always being asked by our customers, “How can we access our computer when we are not physically behind them?”
There can be many reasons you want to access your computer remotely.
You might want to access the files, use the application or even stream personal photos or movies.
Whatever you reason to wanting to access your computer, there are many ways you can do it and this post will endeavor to discuss it.
Remote Desktop
If you have the need to be like you are actually behind your computer, even though you are not physically behind it, remote desktop is your answer.
There are many different remote desktop programs available, depending on your operating system and what is already built into your computer.
The built in Windows Remote Desktop Program (RDP) require you have your router setup to map a port and be difficult to setup.
A much easier way is to download a free and secure program like Teamviewer.
Once Teamviewer is installed, you can set up unattended access, which will give you a username and password to enter in on the other ends computer you are using to access your remote desktop.
Teamviewer must be installed on both computers, one as your server and the other as the client.
File Access
You might not have the need to access your entire computer remotely and just need access to some files on it.
FTP – File Transfer Protocol is the answer to this problem, however basic FTP can be hard to setup and again will need some configuration of your router or modem and network.
A much easier way is to install DropBox, a free program which hosts your files in the cloud.
Installing Dropbox on both computer will allow you to sync files and access them on either device as needed.
If you do not want your files on the client computer or do not want to install Dropbox on the client, you can use their website to download the files you require when needed, bit logging in with your username and password you set up in Dropbox.
Setup A Web Server
A web server is a program which serves you web pages over the internet. You are using one right now reading my post.
Townsvillenerds.com is hosted on a web server and pretty much every website you use on the web, is hosted on a computer using web server programs.
A really cool way to access certain files over the web is to turn your computer into a web server using WAMP if your using Windows and LAMP if you are using Linux.
For most users it will be Wamp which stands for Windows, Apache, Mysql and PHP. These are the requirements which will be downloaded and installed on your computer to turn it into a web server.
For security purposes you should probably put a password on your web pages so only you can access them but that will depend on entirely what you are using your web server for.
Also you will need to map port 80 or similar from your router to your web server program so it can be accesses from the outside.
