This is my first time deploying a web application written in PHP/MySQL on a windows server and boy oh boy it has been tough. For background, I'm used to purchasing a hosting service like HostGator and then serving my website using cpanel. Doing this on a windows machine has been so incredibly difficult it is unbelievable.

I believe that I finally have the correct bindings setup for my PHP website as well as the handler mappings.

The IT guy setup an A record in GoDaddy for the subdomain I'm deploying on to resolve externally too. Right now I can hit the website from the same machine that the server is located on if I navigate to https://portal.--removed--.com:835/ but right now I get a 404 if I try to navigate to https://portal.--removed--.com/ (without the port) from an external machine. I am guessing this is because it takes a while for GoDaddy to resolve the subdomain?

Now I'm struggling to setup the MySQL database so that it can be access from an external machine. When I'm on the on-prem machine, I can hit the MySQL database just fine by using localhost:3306. But how exactly do I set it up so that I can communicate with the database from anywhere?