Do it yourself web hosting?

[Roxxorz]

I have been creating web pages for some time for friends and family.   I'm looking into doing it for a friend's business and I have been wondering how hard it would be to host it myself.  I have a small network on DSL at home and have a PC that I could use as the server.  Could anyone reccommend some good sites or articles I could read as to the best way to set up my own web hosting operation? Thanks.

[Roxxorz]

Also checked with my ISP and there is no rule against running a web server on my current ISP setup.

[DiosT]

I dont have any article links but..

-Make sure you have a good firewall
-Make sure your OS is up to date w/latest security patches at least
-Make sure you HTTP server is a fairly recent version--and dont use IIS, use Apache or something :-P
-Dont promise your friend his business will reliably be up all the time -- If you promise it, you can get 'screwed' if you suddenly are no longer friends ;-P


Personally, I think it'd be better to spend $10 or less per month for you friend to get a shared website with another web host, -ESPECIALLY- for a 'serious' business page...

Even if he wants you to manage it, tell him to buy the webspace from soandso.com, go through the sign up process yourself and tell him what to fill in... that way the business/domain/purchase is in his name, then do the paper work for him to 'hire' you to create the page, set it up on the server in working order, and test the functions of the pages.

Note that i did not mention maintenance, because that adds a lot more to a contract... including how much you get paid hourly for working on the page, how quickly you must fix problems, etc.


yes I know you said it's for a friend.. but in the business world remember you have no friends.. if something happens between you two, and you have a contract (even a verbal one--it's valid for up to 6 months in many states), then he can sue the shoes off your feet for business losses...

Put the problems of hosting a business in someone else's hands, and just sign a contract of agreeing to create the page for him...



I know I went fairly in depth into the legal aspect of this, but i've had a case where i -almost- was stuck in a contract that would require me to maintain the page.. when that wasnt what my group did (we created w/large amounts of comments, and made it friendly for someone with minor HTML knowledge to update--The 'group' was only together for a few months)

the main problems you'll have hosting a business are:
-Bandwidth issues -- you playing games/downloading something will slow down the business' website
-Downtime of both your ISP and your server -- typically on a 'strong' web host the connections are redundant and able to handle outtages on the lines... also, when your server reboots it'll shut down the page for a while.
-Security threats -- you always have to keep the OS up to date, and keep up to date on possible security threats for your OS & HTTP/Web Server
-Extra incoming bandwidth, when the website eventually gets linked out, you'll have web spiders and visitors coming to your website, reducing your avalible bandwidth... with the bandwidth issues i mentioned earlier, this can bottleneck and slow all your internet capabilities down


All that said, I havnt hosted a web server from home, I only do localhost web servers for testing, then upload the files to a UNIX shared web server i bought space on -- this frees me from keeping up on security/firewall/os/etc. problems, i'm already busy enough with my college work..

I do however, know your position, I had thought of hosting a personal website from my home server, but decided it wasn't worth trying.. I aso have made websites for friends, and businesses, but I never agree to host or maintain their websites.. this gets the ball out of your court when you finish your part of the contract of making the website (I did take classes in business website design & legal issues/contracts assciated with it, on top of my personal experience making websites :-))

[Jaeren]

DiosT raises some very good issues. And while your isp may not officially state bluntly no webservers, sometimes they have all kidns of stuff in legal terms or simply the right to disconnect you for whatever reason they want. Like DiosT said, anything you do on your internet connection will probably slow down the website and most cable / dsl providers limit their upstream qutie a bit so if the website gets much traffic at all, it could bottleneck with your traffic.

There are many places that have good deals on hosting which really make a lot more sense as they have dedicated hardware, faster connections, server support staff, etc. I know of one that a friend uses that has a basic package of $9.95 for 400 mb of storage, 20 gigabytes of bandwidth per month and 10 mysql databases, lets you add on as many domains as you want, unlimited pop emails/forwarders, catchall email, and a bunch of other stuff. Pretty good deal for $9.95 per month or $101.40 per year. I know of other providers that offer similiar deals as well. So in the end, it's a lot less headache and much better uptime, faster speed, etc.

Besides, who wants to be trying to make sure a website is up when you could be playing eq? ;)

Hmm, wait. I run a small webserver on my own cable. Then again, I dont really do much with it. It's more force of habit and a way to keep my linux, apache, php, perl, etc skills up to date.

Basically I guess that I think it's probably easier to just get service with someone else. If you are doing it to learn, that's different. But running a business site (especially one not your own) to learn probably isn't the best. I'm sure your friend won't be too happy if you blow up your machine trying some neat new webserver software or something and his website is down til you get it fixed ;)

Also, for any personal pages, a lot of internet access company's allow a small (5 or 10mb usually) personal only (no business stuff) homepage on their servers. Check the provider you use and the one your family/friends use if it is different, you might find a small space is enough for their needs.

If you do want to know a couple of suggestions for individual companies for this, I can find a few that I have worked with or people I trust have. I won't post them here since I don't want it to seem that we officially support any webhosting companies, especially since Infinity Internet has hosted our site. I haven't personally used their services except for here but if the load and speed of this website is the norm for them, they would probably be a good choice and would be a nice way to thank them for their help. :)

[Roxxorz]

Very helpful.  Thanks very much.

[Jaeren]

Oh, one thing I forgot. Depending on your provider, you ip may be static or dynamically assigned. If it's dynamic, most likely every time you connect to the internet, you get a new IP (cable outages, reboots, etc meanign a new connect). That means you have to setup some method of changing the ip the domain points to or it will point at someone else's machine.

I personally use hn.org for my domains (http://hn.org/) on that type of setup.

For webserver software, the best choice I think is Apache, it's one of the most commonly used servers (http://httpd.apache.org/)

[Rixis]

I found the guide here helpful:

http://www.dslwebserver.com/

[DiosT]

Also...

if you MUST host the thing from home...

set up a linux/unix box as your router/firewall, hope you know what you're doing ;-)

redirect requests on port 80 to your web server box (seperate from firewall), if you do this setup, IIS might be ok--this is assuming only port 80 requests can get to the server, and IIS is fully up to date.. personally I dont trust IIS though...

And again, make sure your friend knows (even get him to sign a contract) acknowledging that you do not garuntee full, or 99% uptime -- failure to do this can result in a lawsuit, if your 'friend' suddently becomes only a 'business aquaintence' and decides he doesnt like the outages...

Always be careful in the business world.. sorry if I keep taking this to contracts, but other people who read this might find the information useful, especially if they are doing it for a business that isn't on personal/friendly terms

[Xlorep DarkHelm]

I currently host my own Web Site from my home.  Here's what I have:

1. Pentium 266MHz system.  Pretty small, not very ipressive except I've slapped a 120GB hard drive in it (it's also my file server for my home network).

2. Linux.  I currently am using Gentoo Linux 1.4.  It's not Linux for people who don't know what they are doing. as it sets itself up by compiling *everything* from scratch.  I've slapped in a few optimization codes for the compiler to help squeeze every last little bit of performance I can from the entire system.

3. Apache Web Server - This is The Industry Standard for Web Servers, and the majority of the WWW uses this web server to power web pages.  I'm using the Apache2 Web Server.

4. PHP - Pretty standard nowadays for server-side scripting backends.  Many sites use it, for example, both the vB and phpBB Forums systems use PHP to operate everything.

5. MySQL - Database backend, I use it in onjunction with PHP for dynamic websites.  Another popular choice is PostgreSQL.

6. ProFTPd - FTP access for the webserver.  Very useful for people to be able to access their web pages (like if I'm not at home, and I want to upload/add new things to my website).

7. SSL - Security layer, used in https transactions, very useful, especially if you are planning on setting up some sort of buisness/product selling site.  There is a Mod for Apache that gets this working in the Web Server.

8. SSHd - MUCH better and more secure than Telnet, this lets people log into the server, with their own shell configuration, but sends & recieves everything sent to/from the server encrypted using SSL.  For Windows systems attempting to contact the server, there is a client program called PuTTY that handles SSH connections.

Also - I currently have (not exactly by intentional design, but it ended up happening as such) 2 firewalls that must be passed through to get into my home network, and then my friends also set up individual firewall programs (Norton Internet Security 2004 Pro) on each of their computers.  I'm usually opposed to putting firewalls on the computers that the firewall is supposed to protect from intrusion, but...  Well they aren't my computers that have the firewalls on them.

My server is also it's own DNS server (until I can get independant name servers up and running), which I like to keep in-house so when I have to add new records to my domain name's DNS entry, it's quick and easy.  I use the PowerDNS server, and that also utilizes MySQL to hold the DNS records.

Also - I have a Static IP address from my DSL provider.  I don't like trying to fool with setting up DNS entries with a Dynamic address.