Apache Query: Requirements To Run Own Web-Server?

Hi friends, I have learnt that one can host own website using apache web server. Does that mean that I will have to keep my computer ON all the time. What about browsing? How will people visit my website. I mean what address will they have to put in the address bar of browser where currently I am putting the address of my website. And what all security policies will I need to apply to prevent my computer being hacked. I was just browsing internet when I came to know that a windows based machine gets hacked in 2 days and a Linux based machine in 4 days on average. If that's true, isn't it quite difficult to be connected to internet for a long time and hosting website. I curious to know more about how to host my website on my web server. I have plans to host my website on the LAN I have in my hostel. Do supply your comments. Regards.

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Yes - you'll need a computer that runs 24/7. Throw in a pretty decent speed internet link along with that, else once your site starts getting crowded you might have problems. This computer needs to be running Apache on Windows or Linux (preferrably Linux).



For this you'll need to purchase a domain name from a registrar service like GoDaddy.Com. But aside from that, this domain name should be able to point to your web-servers IP address. For this you need to run a DNS (Domain Name Services) server. Think of this like a telephone directory. People access your site by your domain name. Your domain name refers to the DNS (Telephone Directory) to find out your Phone Number (IP Address) and calls up that machine.

If you're using an ADSL link - most likely you won't have a fixed IP. For this service to function properly you need a fixed IP - coz thinking metaphorically, your phone number should remain constant in order for people to reach you correctly every time. However, acquiring a fixed IP costs $$$ - so you can resort to a Dynamic Domain service such as no-ip.com or dyn-dns.com, which allows you to hook up your domain name to a non-static IP. You simply run a small client program on your web-server, which updates your new IP at the dynamic dns service's server everytime the IP changes. That way, you domain always points to your latest IP.



It's true that no system is completely hack-proof - but Linux stands a better chance at withstanding hacking attempts. You can configure linux in such a way that it runs only the required services - i.e. HTTPD (Web-server) in your case. That way you can minimize the open ports - which are usually exploited to break into your system.

Now there's this other problem for you too - you are on a LAN in your college. Your machine will have a local LAN IP - which the outside world cannot see. When you connect to the internet or someone tries to connect back to you - they see the main IP of your college's internet routing server. You need to contact your System Administrator and tell him to allow NAT (Network Address Translation) routing to your own computer, so that any requests coming to your domain should be automatically forwarded to your machine. Else such requests will either lead straight to your college web-site (if it has one).. or else get blocked at the first router it meets in an inbound path to your network.

 

 

 

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Hi sandeep
According to me if you have windows xp professional or windows 2003 server you need nothing to host ur web site.
If you have these plz contact me . I will show you the way. Bye

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vicky99 This is not true becuase you will have to have a domain and a domain name server. You can use your own PC (even Win 95) to host a local or intranet server on your own network, to serve files through a webserver on the internet you must have a domain name and domain name server account somewhere, this ususally costs money, not to mention that you should have a machine that is on 24/7/365 with someone that has the ability to bring it back up if it crashes, and a Windown machine does this quite often.

I would use an Apache which is more reliable and more poeple know how to service it, but if all you really want to do is run a webserver on your own home network or even single machine for development then YES you can use Win XP or Win 2003 or later but not without running T1 and or T2 lines into your home (which also run quite a bit of money monthly). Microscopic Earthling was correct with this

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try to start with some free packadges for starting your own webserver. XAMPP is a very good one, and pretty simple to configure, works with WinXP. I have it on my maschine, just for testing purposes.
You can download it for free, just google for term "xampp".
Installation process is simple, just follow the onscreen instructions, if you get in trouble, feel free to ask here on forums, someone will jump-in to help...
Anyway, when you finish with installation, if you followed the rules and instructions, you will have XAMPP installed on your computer in folder:
c:\Program Files\XAMPP\

Now browse in folder inside XAMPP called
htdocs

Now that's the place you put your website stuff, index.html and others

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The requirements are quite simple. You need an OS (which you already have) a web server software like apahe and a DNS redirection service(for testing try no-ip.com's free service where you get a free subdomain like yourname.no-ip.com. And lastly a very fast internet connection.

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I wouldn't recommend actually trying to serve a website from your computer. I mean, it's great for testing your PHP skills, and lots of other things - I have about 6 Drupal installations on my computer, most of them broken from messing aruond. Apart from that I have lots of phpBB/Wordpress installations. I always mess around with Apache + PHP + MySQL (LAMP), but it's really not for the whole world wide web. You'll also at certain points find the noise that your computer makes during the night quite unbearable, or at least I did.

BTW (off-topic), m^e, my brother's wife is the executive producer of Radio Bu Israel. (I noticed last.fm shows you listened to it...)

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You can basically run a website off of ANY kind of computer. My laptop runs Apache for internal use, my Linux box is used for internal & external use as well. I (used to) have a 333 MHz, 128 MB RAM, computer running Red Hat Linux 9 as an internal server.

Basically, you just have to worry about how much traffic you're going to get.

An old computer, 333 MHz is great for a website that gets little traffic or INTERNAL network use only. However, a 2 GHz P4 will work great for Internet serving.

After the hardware issue, you have to worry about LINE SPEED. A simple ADSL (what generally ALL DSL users have) has a great downlink but a SLOW uplink. This is why Data Centers have OC fiber lines. Fiber lines are sync speed meaning the downlink is the same as the uplink (haha... must be great to work in a data center ) so there's plenty of bandwidth. My DSL uplink is 40 KBps, so my website downloads for everyone else at that same speed too, regardless of what their connection is.

[N]F

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Hey guys i wana to ask that if i wana to host multiple domain name and using free DNS service, all the domain that i have configured to mine ip but how i configured to them to each directory to whom i want as

www.killers-hell.com is mine domain i wana to when some one try to open www.killers-hell.com it will open to c:/my serverfiles/www/killers
but it didnt it open the www directory so wat i will do i even configured Vhost file but it didnt work

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Could you use the ps3 to run apache I have linux on mine.

-reply by freeboy32

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