Help me set up a minecraft server?

No matter what I do the ports won't open. I've followed the instructions on their wiki. Opened the ports according to portforward. I had to set a static ip address so I went and did that as well following instruction I found. But still when I go to test if the port is opened, it's still not. On http://canyouseeme.org/ I usually get something like "connection refused" or "connection timed out." I've tried it with my firewall turned off. I also went in and allowed the port to go through the fire wall. I have a linksy E3200 router and my ip address is one of the ones that start with 192.168 . I also get told that the ports closed for both my external ip address and the ipV4. I'm able to get onto my server through the direct connect option on minecraft but no one else can find me. and when I go to add a server and try both of those ip addresses neither are found. I've been told to change the ip address on the port forwarding option the modem page the(192.168.1.1 web page) to the external ip address only you can't change the beginning section and the external ip address is completely different from that. I'm not sure what else to do. Other have said that the 192.168 are too secure/private to be able to host a minecraft server. Is that true? Can I not host a server what so ever? I know there's hamachi or something like that for hosting but I heard it's very limited, to like 5 people and I have at least 10 people I need to be able to join my server. I won't need anymore slots than 20. but I know I'll need at least that much. What else can i do or what am I possibly doing wrong?