what do i do about dynamic IP's if im trying to host a website off of my main machine. is there a program that can compensate for an everchanging IP or do i have to just modify the files on a regular basis to make sure that the dynamic IP is always kept up to date. any help would be greatly appreciated.

Take a look at sites such as http://www.dyndns.org ... they let you associate a domain or subdomain name (you.dyndns.org) to a dynamic IP.

i was hoping i wouldnt have to do that, i dont want to have to pay for their good services (hence im setting this up from my house, cuz im cheap), but i also do not want to have to append anything to my site like .dyndns.org

You can sign up for a free service @ http://freedns.afraid.org and have it take care of the reverse DNS for you, as long as you already have a domain registered. The instructions are on the site, and it's what I use for my personal site hosted on my personal server. No blah.dyndns.com or anything, just www.yourdomain.com They also provide a script that will automatically update your IP if it changes, so the domain will always resolve.

The site I use is http://www.no-ip.com/ it is a website which lets you get subdomain DNS (site.no-ip.com) and it is free. You can download their Dynamic Updater Client (DUC) which, if running will auto-update DNS for you. Also, you can look into the Tokelau domains http://www.dot.tk it gives you an address (yoursite.tk) which will resolve wed redirects. I hope this helps ya!