Doing your own hosting? 3

[treyball3]

Hi, I've done some web design and am considering wanting to do the hosting too. I know nothing about setting up my own server. Can anyone point me someplace to go? Or does anyone have any tips? I preferably want to set a windows server so I can run ASP on it. I kinda need like a checklist or something, cause I know I'll need security and stuff like that, but like I said, I know nothing about it at this time. Thanks a bunch
Todd

 

[deecee]

then why not spend the $80 a year and host it at

http://www.webhostxl.com/

-- php however

http://www.stormhosts.net/page_HostingPackages.asp

-- asp

or just go on google and type cheap hosting or affordable hosting -- I would rather spend the $6 - $8 a month than have to deal with keeping a site on my cpu

[Hammer]
Nike Failed Slogans -- "Just Don't Do It!"

 

[treyball3]

Sorry, I guess I didn't clarify enough. The reason I am thinking about hosting is because I want to do web design for others, so it would be more than just my site. I agree, if it was just mine, then I would definitely have it hosted somewhere else. But, if I want to design sites for people, I figured it would make it more attractive if I could design and also host it. Thanks again

 

[deecee]

many hosts have reseller packages. you should look into this, where they give you say 10gb harddrive space and 20gb transfer for maybe $100 a month and you can break that up however you want.

[Hammer]
Nike Failed Slogans -- "Just Don't Do It!"

 

[Genimuse]

A dedicated machine at someone else's facility -- either with or without a reseller package -- is the way to go, imo. The hassle involved in keeping your server live, protected, and functional is considerable.

I have no affiliation with this company (I've just seen them adverstised on TechTV), but Serverbeach (

http://www.serverbeach.com)

seems to have pretty good deals on dedicated servers with reasonable hardware (not Celerons and such): $99 a month for Linux and $119 a month for Microsoft, no setup fees, and both with 450Gb of transfer per month in the price.

 

[gwar2k1]

first you need the server. Go with apache. Try getting an all in one package (Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL - then you can rule the world). I used FoxServ:

http://www.foxserv.net

You'll need a firewall on your computer. Wether or not you're using your own computer or a stand alone you MUST HAVE A FIREWALL. You should also get virus software on there too. Black Ice is possibly the best.

Then you need your content and a domain. Well... you dont need a domain but its advised. Register one from a respectable site.

But... if you know nothing of servers why oh why would you set up a service that other people use? At least learn about it and try it personally, get used to it and then maybe think about hosting people.

Remember, you'll need a sweet PC. PLENTY of RAM and an excellent processor. Plenty of disk space. Just leave hosting to the professionals ok? Become one then rethink...

~*Gwar3k1*~
"To the pressure, everything's just like: an illusion. I'll be losing you before long..."

 

[Wullie]

gwar2k1

Remember, you'll need a sweet PC. PLENTY of RAM and an excellent processor. Plenty of disk space. Just leave hosting to the professionals ok? Become one then rethink...

You could quite easily run a server off an old machine with a 400 processor and 128 RAM, only when you start getting loads of hits would you need to increase it.

treyball3

I've got a lot of respect for anyone that wants to take on the challenge of hosting their own servers, it is a difficult task to start with but becomes simple as you get more knowledgable and you also learn a great deal while doing it.

I personally would advise having at least the following specs if you plan on running a dedicated machine:

Processor: 600Mhz
Memory: 256 RAM
Disk Space: Whatever you need.
Connection: At the very least 512k (This is a minimum, basically the faster the better)

Disk space totally depends on what you will use. If you only have a few small sites that take up about 2 meg of space then even a 20 gig drive is overkill.

If you want step by step instuctions for setting up Apache, Perl, PHP & MySQL then check out the following FAQ in the Apache forum.

faq65-1832

If you want to start hosting, do not download a bundled package. Download each individual package and install them yourself. This takes longer, but you learn how to debug problems and this is one skill you will need.

I see many problems posted in the Apache forum from people who have installed the bundles and they would know how to fix it if they had installed them seperately.

Start off using the server locally, or put it live if it is on a dedicated machine but make sure there is no sensitive information on it. Set-up a test domain for you to get to grips with the config. Start changing things to see what they do and if they break, just reverse the changes that you made.

Next you will need an FTP server and a mail server, both of these can be found easily around the net and prices vary from free to very expensive, depending on the features that you require. Start looking for these at

http://www.download.com

Until you know what you are doing, do not run an anonymous FTP server.

Make sure you have some sort of tape backup and use it regularly, if you don't have a tape drive, burn a copy of the files onto CD every day or two. Also, every week or so take a copy (whether tape or CD) and store it off-site. The last thing you want is a fire to take out your system and the backups.

Security - Make sure that you only install languages and programs that you need. If you don't need something, don't install it, you are just opening another possible method of attack. Get a decent firewall (Zonealarm is one) and a decent anti-virus. (Go for a corporate version made for servers)

If you do decide to go with Apache, if you have any problems that you cannot solve yourself, post them in the Apache forum forum65 and one of us will help you through it.

Good luck!

Hope this helps

Wullie

http://www.necomputers.org.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.whiland.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change.
The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[deecee]

very...well...said

star for the superb explanation

[Hammer]
Nike Failed Slogans -- "Just Don't Do It!"

 

[Wullie]

One part I just realised I missed was DNS.

At first, don't try to host your own DNS servers, use an external company to it. When you understand all that is involved with this, you can decide whether you want to keep using the external company or do it yourself.

I recommend

http://www.zoneedit.com

Hope this helps

Wullie

http://www.necomputers.org.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.whiland.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change.
The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[ChrisHirst]

To add to Wullies excellent post (make it into a FAQ Wullie) it's worth adding that you can also host low use sites with Dynamic IPs if you use one of the Dynamic DNS services, I use

http://www.dyndns.org

and host 2 low bandwidth sites and email plus my own (several) demo sites.


Chris.




Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

 

[Gatorajc]

I would really look into a reseller package. I started out wanting my own hardware. But very quickly you see not only the headache involved like Genimuse said but the cost alone.

To make up the cost you would have to host a lot of web sites. And with the staturation of the market that is very unlikely. I have a reseller package that cost me what breaks down to $5.00 a month. I resell it for $12. There really is not money to be made in hosting anymore.

Owning the hardware sounds really cool and looks better on some advertisments but really it is not worth it.But who knows maybe you can make it work.


AJ

 

[Genimuse]

If you do host the sites yourself be certain to invest in a UPS (killing the sites during a power fluctuation would be bad) and be certain to keep revolving backups. It's one thing to lose the data on your local computer for a bit, but a much bigger thing to lose important business data and communication that your customers are counting on.

 

[Newposter]

Been doing my own hosting at home for over a year now. FTP, mail and web server, with cable and router. Expense is virtually nil except the domain names and UPS. It's really simple to do. DNS is handled by my domain registrar.

Everything runs great on a 333 MHZ machine with 256 Mb RAM. You don't need a powerhouse unless you have HIGH traffic and lots of animation or big databases.

Be aware that Windows NT, 2000 and XP Pro only allow 10 simultaneous users connected, and XP Home only allows 5. Win32 Server allows more, but you pay per person for additional licensing. Unix/linux is unlimited and free.

Newposter
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

 

[Wullie]

Gatorajc,

There is not a high cost associated with hosting a few websites, this is something that most people think and they are wrong.

To start hosting, take the following set-up:

PC
Internet Connection
Power
Backup Drive
UPS (Thanks Genimuse, forgot about that)
DNS

Ok, you already own the PC, have a net connection and you should hopefully have power. Most people will already have a CD/RW or tape drive, or in the worst case scenario, you get a freind to set-up an FTP server and run automatic backups to their machines every day.

So far, you are paying no extra than you would be already.

You can buy a decent UPS from a site like EBay for about £50, some are ever cheaper.

Using Zoneedit, the first 5 sites are free, so if you have less than 5 sites then you don't pay anything for DNS unless you want backup mail servers etc and even then you pay about £20 per year total for backup mail servers for about 10 sites.

If you want to cut costs with backup mail servers, you get someone else who is hosting and do a swap. You create a secondary MX record to their mail server and they make one to yours. When your servers go down, any e-mail is queued in their server until your server comes back online. This is very easy to set-up.

The power needs to be on 24 hours to the server, but a lot of people keep theur PC on anyway. If not then you would be paying a little more for power to this, but still less than hosting elsewhere.

The savings start showing when you want to change the default config for the server or add a new language etc.

Consider the following:

How many of the reseller packages mentioned allow you to change the httpd.conf file if you need to?

How many of them allow you to install new languages?

How many of them allow you unlimited tables in the database? (True unlimited, not just them saying it)

How many of them don't have functions disabled in any language?

How many of them install any modules that you need without question?

Lets say you want to change the location of Perl, or install PHP as a module instead of a CGI or vice-versa, can you do this?

If any of the reseller packages above allow you to do this, what is the cost involved? Hosting on your own involves none of these costs.

The true cost involved with hosting your own servers is the time you put into it.

To start with you spend some time learning all about it and then after this, you can make changes in no time at all.

You take the time to set-up monitors on the server that automatically reboot in the event of a serious problem, or restart the service if the problem is less severe. After you get your servers up and running you can basically leave the server and not touch it.

Contrary to popular belief, running a server does not take loads of your time, unless you start hosting a high number of people and then you would have the money to show for it, so it becomes a job and not a hobby anymore.

If you stick with your own sites, you don't need to worry about someone uploading a script that is going to take the server down etc and can walk away knowing that the servers are running fine. You can set-up external monitors to e-mail you, send a message to your mobile phone, pager etc so you know as soon as they go down and can fix it.

With an external host, you pay for extra disk space and they charge you extra per month or whatever. When you host yourself and choose to add extra disk space, that disk space is yours for life, not just as long as you keep paying for it. You could probably buy a 80gig hard drive for the annual price a host will charge you to add 1 gig to your account.

Overall, it can be cheaper to host your own sites. People that say it is expensive are totally wrong as each case is different.

Hope this helps

Wullie

http://www.necomputers.org.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.whiland.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change.
The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[BHaines]

I skimmed the other responses and I'm not sure I saw this, but also remember you'll need a static IP address, otherwise it can take anywhere from 12 hours to days for your DNS to catch up with you when your IP changes, and invovles all sorts of other little hassles. I have DSL, which is an "Always on" connection, but if the power goes out or the router gets shut off for some reason, when it reconnects my IP alters. Unfortunately, where I live, power outtages can go on for 8-10 hours in bad situations, UPS doesn't help with that. So you might want to look at spending the extra to get a static IP.

 

[Wullie]

BHaines,

Read the post Chris made above. You can use dynamic IP addresses with most of the services. You just install a program onto your machine and it updates your IP on their servers every time it changes. The time for this to reflect on the Internet is between a few seconds to a few minutes.

Hope this helps

Wullie

http://www.necomputers.org.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.whiland.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change.
The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[treyball3]

WOW! this has been a very informative post, I wasn't expecting this many helpful responses. This is great. Thank you to everyone who has posted so far (and thanks in advance to anyone who continues to post)!!!!

 

[BHaines]

Thanks Wullie, I missed that in the posts. A star to Chris for the informative link! (As soon as the star thingie stops being grumpy) I didn't know they were able to do that, and the reviews for it all look really good!

 

[Gatorajc]

Good points Wullie.

Still does not want to make me host my own but for some people I guess it would work. Maybe one day I will learn more about the hardware side of things.




AJ

 

[CapnSteve]

I don't know how high-end you want to go, but my sites are on

http://www.whizhost.com

which seems like a pretty good value.

It has reseller accounts (managed with Plesk) and just about everything enabled (probably including ASP). Last I checked it was $99 per year for 2 GB storage and 30 GB monthly bandwidth.