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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 - Dynamic DNS? )
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.
 
http://dyndns.org is your friend
If I was going to run a web server I would setup debian with lightttpd or apache but that's
just me.
I would just use xp with a apache package of some type (ex. xxamp, wamp, etc...)

You really don't need server 2003 unless you need asp(,net)
 
mokkapoop said:
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 - Dynamic DNS? )
Click to expand...

If this website is important to you...IE...you want uptime, reliability, and clients/customers to get to it....it would be wise for you to upgrade to a commercial account.
*You're more likely to be allowed to run public services on a commercial account, versus...it's often against the rules (TOS) to run them on home grade accounts. I don't know if TW blocks common web ports on home accounts.
*Static IP is more reliable...yes dyndns can work..but you will experience brief periods of non-functionality sometimes with it

If you're just dorking around with your home page...and hardly get any hits...you'll probably get away with it as long as you staff off their radar.
 
timewarner doesn't block anything... or throttle anything...which is nice



and your hardware is incredibly overkill for a website on a 1mbps line... pentium 133 would do you just fine (believe it or not)

when i set up my first web page on my home connection i also took the opportunity to learn slackware... it was a fun project... and i had "powered by: " slackware and apache img on the site too, it was :cool:

EDIT: there was a nice website that helped me out quite a bit years and years ago... and its still up!!!! http://www.dslwebserver.com/

EDIT2: upon reading it, i'm seeing a lot of info on there is OLD... but the jist of it exists, and it is still pretty good advice
 
mokkapoop, if you are looking to put your server in a proper facility with proper redundancy, bandwidth, and uptime guarantees for basically the price of your cable line, let me know... shoot me a pm.
 
TopGun said:
That sounds like a hell of a deal for $45 a month Ockie.
Click to expand...

well it's 50 a month and we will host your server, about 79 a month and you can rent a dell poweredge along with that (good spec'd)
 
goodcooper said:
timewarner doesn't block anything... or throttle anything...which is nice
Click to expand...
Your kidding right? lol

ftp is blocked by comcast in my area, 22, 23, and 443 and sometimes 25 are blocked as well.

if you are going to run a server out of your house you will have to upgrade to comcast bis, like 100$ a month. with that tho ftp, telnet, and 443 are unblocked. 25 is unblocked then too. also you will need a static ip, which you will get with a bis account. they will still mess with your connection if you transfering large files but not as much.

if you don't get a bis account you will find out real fast comcast doesn't like that. took less then 8 hrs. for them to notice i was rerouting mail via my home comp....
 
YeOldeStonecat and utshost has a good point about your TOS, I forgot about how strict some companies can be. It wouldnt hurt to look into that issue.
 
Admittedly, I never read any of the replies here before mine, so this may have been mentioned. Anyway, if you want a free subdomain, sure, dyndns is great. However, if you are planning on using a real domain, zoneedit is your friend. Free dynamic dns service.
 
utshost said:
Your kidding right? lol

ftp is blocked by comcast in my area, 22, 23, and 443 and sometimes 25 are blocked as well.

if you are going to run a server out of your house you will have to upgrade to comcast bis, like 100$ a month. with that tho ftp, telnet, and 443 are unblocked. 25 is unblocked then too. also you will need a static ip, which you will get with a bis account. they will still mess with your connection if you transfering large files but not as much.

if you don't get a bis account you will find out real fast comcast doesn't like that. took less then 8 hrs. for them to notice i was rerouting mail via my home comp....
Click to expand...


nope, well at least not in my area... in central NC i have earthlink running through time warner cable... ports are all open, free as a bird, has been ever since i got the service...

granted i only have 384 up.... i pay 41.95 for 5000/384... i better have my friggin ports open :mad:

i need a bigger pipe...
 
I had TW for a while, and they had to open up port 25 for me. But, it wasn't a big deal. I just called the help desk, and 5 min later it was open.

But, as for software/etc, take a look at Gentoo. I have been using that on my home server for web/ftp/mail/files for about 5 years now. I have the PC in a closet with just a LAN cable running to it. Don't even have a monitor on it.
I have Apache/Pure-FTP/Postfix/Samba/MySQL running on it. The MySQL is for the mail/ftp server. I keep all my users/passwords in there. Makes it easy to add people later on.
 
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