Hosting your own website

[conorp]

Well lately I have been thinking about buying a cheap old computer and using that as my web host. Again I'm not very familiar with this as I have only ever used shared hosting but I would install xammp to give me the local host stuff, use a router so it had access to the internet and set up the domains in such a way that it works. I am using adsl internet and i have heard of a program that makes the adsl stick to one ip and not change constanly like it normal would.


So,
Have any of you done this
Pros, Cons
How much does it slow the internet down?

Etc

Conorp

[hallsofmontezuma]

I would recommend to just use inexpensive shared hosting at $5-$6/month. However, if you're determined to try it yourself, you should install Linux on the server (I assume mentioned xammp because you want to use Windows?). Doing your own hosting can be a great experience, and you'll learn a lot. If you want to do it just to save a little bit of money, then don't. If you want to try out hosting from your home for the learning experience, then you may really enjoy it. However, keep in mind, benefits of outsourcing your hosting are reliability/uptime (what happens if your power/cable goes out due to a storm?) and having someone else take care of server issues. Are you familiar with the different types of RAID, backup power, etc. If you look on craigslist, you can likely find an old server (for instance a Dell 2450/2550) that would have a hardware RAID card and multiple power supplies.
Assuming you won't have much traffic, you shouldn't notice much difference in bandwidth usage.
Having said all that, it would probably be best if you try it for a while with a junk domain that you don't care about too much. That way, if anything goes wrong, you won't have the stress of the downtime.

[conorp]

How is it security wise?

[hallsofmontezuma]

Well that's the other issue. When you outsource your hosting to Hostmonster, Dreamhost, Godaddy, etc... you're letting sys admins who know what they're doing with security for the network, apache, OS, etc. Hosting it yourself, you can have it just as secure. However, obviously most people hosting from their homes don't know about security, so that could certainly be an issue.

[Ryan]

Have you considered using a dirt cheap VPS? There are some available for less than US$13/month. Then you could meddle with a lot more settings than you would with regular shared hosting without the cost of a dedicated box or the hassle/speed of running a box in your house.

[hallsofmontezuma]

Ryan, that's a great idea. I wasn't aware there were any VPS plans that inexpensive. That way you have more control without the hassle, and at a great cost. Plenty of people pay twice that just for shared hosting.

[joetek]

I had a server loaded up in my basement for years. It is a great learning experience, but really is a pain to do anything with. You'll want a business DSL connection that offers a static IP address, and get yourself a good UPS. Never put any business or critical websites on it. Treat it as your sandbox or your playground, nothing more.

As far as your questions about slowing down your connection and security, those go hand in hand. If you don't stay up on security patches, you'll inevitably end up with vulnerabilities and exploits that end up using your bandwidth. By advertising your machine as a server, you'll be much more of a target.

My machine also seemed to sense when I was on vacation or away for the weekend. It always seemed to lock up, or the DSL connection would drop on Friday's as I'm leaving town, which of course meant that anything on it was unavailable till I returned on Sunday night. If you're hosting DNS or Email, 48 hours is long enough that auto retries start failing. Not good!

As ryan and hallsofmontezuma rightly point out, it's alot more expensive and probably not worth the hassle given the falling prices of VPS's. After 8 years of my home server, I moved everything to a VPS about 3 years ago, and the lack of stress is well worth it! There's not much you can do with a home machine that you can't with a VPS..

Just my $0.02.

[film_girl]

When you're looking at a host, don't just go with t he cheapest. Slicehost (they start at $20) is pretty solid and if you aren't afraid of installing your own stuff, you can configure it to run pretty much anything you want.

I'll second joetek -- you'd be better off using that computer as a development server rather than actually hosting it. The cost of a business level cable or DSL line is going to cut out whatever costs you'd save hosting it at home. And then you have to deal with all the maintenance. At least with a VPS and proper backups, you can wipe the server if anything goes awry and start again. And then you have the option of scaling to something bigger.

That said, using that computer as a dev server is a GREAT way to not only increase your skills, but also makes it really easy to test stuff out before loading to the production server. My fiance and I are using an old P4 as a dedicated dev server that all of the other machines can access and it's a great way to test stuff, break stuff etc. without affecting a real "live" site.

[conorp]

Thank you all! I think I will stay with my shared hosting for now as it is probably much easier. Although I'm not convinced that it would be more expensive Its still not worth my while at this point of time. The only chance of me using it now would be as a test server. Is there any point doing this or would that be the same as running a localhost on this computer?

[williamsba]

If you do feel like giving it a shot and you can't get a static IP from your ISP, you can use www.no-ip.com to fake a static IP. I used it before to host a home server (Verizon FIOS will only give static IPs to businesses at about $150/month, arg!). But like everyone else said, I wouldn't use it for production, just a dev server to test on.