Personal Server

[isuaggie]

I am completly against paying for someone to host my website and want to have my own personal web server. Does anyone here want to share how to do this? Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Todd

[isuaggie]

I am completly against paying for someone to host my website and want to have my own personal web server. Does anyone here want to share how to do this? Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Todd

[raynerj]

If you host your own site, then you are going to be sharing your bandwidth with whomever is viewing your site. If you have dialup, then do not expect many people to visit your site.

Your internet access provider will also charge you more for a fixed DNS, and monitor your bandwidth useage closely and charge accordingly.

The simplest method is to share your hardrive with no passwords. It gets harder from there.

[isuaggie]

Well, I'm not running on dialup so that's not an issue. Could you share more or direct me to some places to read more about it?

[Soquili]

Hi Todd,

You could start with a Linux server with Apache as the web server. Wrox press has some books that teach Apache, PHP and MySql. The monthly newsletter from Wrox this month features just such a book.

As John mentioned your bandwidth usage can have higher fees from your ISP.

[isuaggie]

I think I found the book you are taking about and may consider buying it. It says it will "teach" how to use Windows, which I use rather than Linux. Do you think learning Linux would be a better approach or just stick with what I know? Say I was to stick with Windows, would I need to purchase Windows Server 2003?

Sorry to bombard with all the questions but I'm really interested and want to get started soon. I'll wait for responses and then continue with further questions.

Thanks for continued advice...

--Todd

[raynerj]

I Am not sure of this, but I think there is a version of apache that will run on windows. Be prepared to be hacked, and cracked if you run a windows box though. 90% of the net runs on unix/linux for a reason and it is not because it is an inexpensive OS.

Be prepared for lots of down time, because the server crashes if you run windows.

[Soquili]

Todd, you could use Windows Server 2003. It comes with Internet Information Services (IIS) version 6.0 which can be used for your web service. If you are familiar with Windows networking and security settings (be sure you use all available security patches) you can safely have a Windows server. I've never had problems with Windows servers crashing and I've used them since NT 3.5 came out.

I suggested Linux and Apache as they are very common on the net. Unix was used for the original ARPANET for the military back in the 1970's and some of those servers are still in use in the internet. The TCP/IP protocol was developed on Unix servers.

As John suggests, there is a version of Apache for Windows. You can even have IIS and Apache running on the same box.