Hosting Your Own Websites/Databases

jamesfreddie

jamesfreddie

jamesfreddie

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I wanted to know what you need to host your own website from home.

I want to run some wordpress sites so will need the ability to host SQL databases.

I assume i could run some old/low end hardware to do this?

What O/S should i run?

How would i set it up? Is there a good guide?

How would i access the control panel?

Will my home IP address be public?

Will i be able to run a website with little traffic on a 3mb upload? I should be on 6mb upload in march/april.

All help appreciated.
 
Have you factored in the cost of running the server, over that of buying hosting/a VPS somewhere?

If you are adamant on DIY'ing, then OS is pretty much up to you. You could go open source and run some distro of Linux with mysql and apache, or you could run a windows server OS, with MySQL or MS SQL Express and IIS.

Your WAN IP address has always, and will always be public. You'll need to open up the relevant ports (most likely just 80 and 443, unless you want external access to the DB or are doing anything more complex) to whatever the internal IP of your server(s) are.

How would you access what control panel? Unless you install yourself a web-based front end (like PHPMyAdmin), then you'll be remote desktop-ing to your server and configuring things in the OS. Your wordpress blog you'd continue to access through /wp-admin.

I have a feeling though, that if you need to ask such basics, it might not be the simplest of things for you to configure.
 
paradigm said:
Have you factored in the cost of running the server, over that of buying hosting/a VPS somewhere?

If you are adamant on DIY'ing, then OS is pretty much up to you. You could go open source and run some distro of Linux with mysql and apache, or you could run a windows server OS, with MySQL or MS SQL Express and IIS.

Your WAN IP address has always, and will always be public. You'll need to open up the relevant ports (most likely just 80 and 443, unless you want external access to the DB or are doing anything more complex) to whatever the internal IP of your server(s) are.

How would you access what control panel? Unless you install yourself a web-based front end (like PHPMyAdmin), then you'll be remote desktop-ing to your server and configuring things in the OS. Your wordpress blog you'd continue to access through /wp-admin.

I have a feeling though, that if you need to ask such basics, it might not be the simplest of things for you to configure.
Click to expand...

this, this and this....

as much fun as it is to build and configure new servers, if your unsure how to go about it then doing one at home might be a bigger bite than your first thought.

A hosted solution might be better for you.

However if you sure that this is the way to go I'd go and rent (and I already do so) a Linux vps for less then £5 per month.

This will be a base Linux os that you'll need to install php, mysql, myphpadmin, apache2, postfix, dovecot and all the other email/web awesomeness.

then you can quite literary do what you like! but be warned you'll waste many hours configuring and restoring from backups when it goes wrong, if this is your first.

you could get a crappy old PC, install ubuntu (or similar) and start without the costs, but I'd steer away from running this solution on the net from your home connection. - you're asking for trouble....

hope that helps.
 
Do you have a fixed IP with your ISP? If not, you'll need to arrange one.

A Raspberry Pi might be a good fit hardware wise, but as others have said, unless you want to do it for the fun, a basic hosted solution could well be preferable.
 
I have a Linux VM hosting my two sites. I moved them local as I wanted to save £3 a month on hosting as the traffic on them these days is nothing.

As others said, unless you have already played with hosting you would be better to go paying for it. If your really set in your way with hosting the sites yourself I suggest you try with dummy sites first. Make something like dev.domain.com and point it to your local server. Break it, fix it, break it again, fix it again. You'll learn tonnes over time.

Personally I am a Windows fan but Windows has nothing over Linux when it comes to web hosting. Linux is fast, up to date with the best web software (apache, php and mysql) and of course free. I use Arch Linux.
 
Thanks for all the replys.

I was only really trying this to see if i could do it.

If i don't every try it, I will never be able to do it.

So i should install Windows Server 2008 then MySQL and thats all the software i would need on the server side of it?
 
kerrgreg said:
Also you can avoid the whole fixed IP thing using DYDNS or similar.
Click to expand...

eye, this is what i did.

set up a dyndns account to pick up my dynamic ip from my home router, then set a forward on the domain to the new dyndns address.

this means that any traffic bound for mydomain.com gets forwarded to my.dyndns.org which in turn hits my router at home. a simple firewall rule to allow port 80 traffic to the ip of my linux box and job done.

the only down side to this is that your NOT able to virtual hosts.

This is due the url are are using when you finally land on your linux box always being the same dyndns.org address.
 
Sorry to disappoint blastman, but I can confirm I have virtual hosts working on my setup.

Both sites point to the dynamic DNS address as a CNAME. Other than that virtual hosts works fine for me. Arch Linux Apache httpd. I have three vhosts configured. There's no reason why your current setup wouldn't work as the address header will have the vhost address in it.
 
Swarfega said:
Sorry to disappoint blastman, but I can confirm I have virtual hosts working on my setup.

Both sites point to the dynamic DNS address as a CNAME. Other than that virtual hosts works fine for me. Arch Linux Apache httpd. I have three vhosts configured. There's no reason why your current setup wouldn't work as the address header will have the vhost address in it.
Click to expand...

umm, really?

I removed my build after moving to a VPS so cant test it. must have something to do with the way I created the forward from domain1.com to my dyndns address.

cant remember what options I choose now as it was a year ago!

pleased it works for you thou :)
 
what internet connection have you got at home?

I had to stop doing this when even though the website had no traffic apart for my developing it the adsl upload was killing me when i was remote from home.

ended up moving to a VPS, couldn't find one to take my image of my webserver tho, that would have been wayy cool :)
 
My two main sites have barely any traffic any more so I knew I could move them. I'm on Virgin 30Mb. I think the upload is 2Mb. Both running from one virtual machine on a HP Microserver configured with a tiny 512MB RAM.
 
with the on set of faster and faster upload connections i think more and more peoiple will want to start hosting stuff at home.

we should build a VM that can be copied & downloaded, pre configured as a web server. Sell the support.. easy money.. :)
 
It would be easy to make a base install with Arch. Apache, PHP, MYSQL and PHPMyAdmin. Other plugins and software like GD for PHP, vsftpd. There's no GUI though so the user would still need to use a terminal to manage items like NIC's and user accounts. I don't like webmin.

Linux is great for hosting web services. I wouldn't even consider Windows for your average website.
 
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