Server @ Home: Suggestions and Help

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mokkapoop

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 6, 2005
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OK guys. I have a brand new Dell Inspiron 531 desktop with the following specs just sitting at home:

AMD X2 4400+
4GB DDR2 667MHZ
250GB SATA HD

I want to start a little project and start hosting my website here at my house instead of paying for another company to host it. However, I am not sure where to begin. I'm certainly not a newbie when it comes to IT stuff, but I have never set something like this up.

What I do have:

Spare Dell Inspirion 531 Desktop
Time Warner 10/1mbps connection (Dynamic IP - TW says I have to upgrade to a commercial account to get static ip - so what do I do here? )
Windows XP / Vista / Sever 2003

Would I need to get something like cpanel to then use the web hosting stuff?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
If you want to avoid paying for a static IP you could always use something like dyndns.org or another free dns service. Most have limits, but in the past I have never exceeded them for regular usage with less then 50 people accessing a forum, game server stats, etc. I know my Linksys WRT54G supports DDNS services, but personally I have never tried that before with my router.

All my past experience with servers have been using a *nix based system when it came to web based administration. I know my friend used to use Virtual Hosting Control System and it was a free alternative to cpanel, plesk, directadmin, etc. Granted it did not have some of the more advanced features found in ones you pay for, but it worked efficiently.
Edit: It seems that VHCS has stopped development and some of the developers have started VHCS Omega.
Here is also a list of free web based control panels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_panel_(Web_hosting)

From a hosting standpoint, a web based control panel is not required. It is just a handy thing for remote administration. You could easily just install XAMPP and go from there. It all really depends how much remote access you would need. Could FTP suffice? Do you need some type of shell access? Could webmin do it? There are several ways that can be considered and normally you see several different methods combined. I use FTP, directadmin, and SSH access depending on the server and what I am doing.
Here is a list of other WAMPs if XAMPP isn't your cup of tea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_WAMPs

Hopefully that will give you a head start, I will cull through my links later on when I have more time to see what else I might have.
 
mokkapoop said:
No help for beginners around here besides the above post?
Click to expand...
This might get more of a responce if it was moved to the general software, networking, or webmastering forum. These appears to be more of software / server configuration type questions then general hardware.
 
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