Operating My Own Web Site From Home- Questions

Factual Questions
1

For once, I’ll try to be concise and brief. :slight_smile: I wish to launch my web site, and have considered doing it from my home. I have some questions about that.

  1. If I get a DSL or Cable Modem, will running my site off of it slow that device down so much that it renders it almost useless for anything else?-i.e. myself and family using the same DSL or Cable Modem box.

  2. Do I need a separate P.C. to use as a server? How zippy does it need to be?

  3. If I wish to have video stills or moving video on the web site, or links to secondary pages that have moving video, how does that impact the answer to # 2?

  4. Am I permitted to operate this from my home without any kind of license?

  5. May I link to any other web sites that are of interest to me with impunity? The SDMB for example. My site won’t be income-generating.

  6. Is the server box I will be using always " On Line"? That is to say, if nobody is viewing my web site at the moment, is that P.C. actually DOING anything? Can I simply build a new P.C., and have a second 60 gig HD installed, and call THAT my server? Or, does it have to be a separate box to be more efficient?

  7. How hard IS it to do this from home? The design work isn’t a concern at all. I mean, the wiring, what do I need to do to have this happen? I don’t know how helpful my local DSL provider would be in assisting me with this. Can I do it alone, I’m fairly wiring-literate.

Thank you all in advance for the help with this one. The final push here has come from Yosemitebabe, whose web site is a beautiful asset and brings her art to the wired world. Hopefully by September, I’ll have something up and running.

Cartooniverse

2

Are you talking about creating your own website, or running it on your own web server? You don’t need the latter to create and display a website.

If it’s just a website (like my own) then it’s much easier. The site - consisting of all of the pages, pictures, sounds, download files, and so on - is normally ‘hosted’ by another company on their own web server (basically a PC that ‘serves’ web pages on request).

You can get free webspace on a thousand-and-one sites (such as Xoom or GeoCities). You sign up and they make it very straightforward to upload the web pages to their server for storage (and many offers simple online text editors so that you don’t even upload anything). Of course, you get what you pay for, so many ask for advertising space in return. Your ISP may well offer you free webspace as part of your existing agreement - most of them do.

In summary:

  1. Not applicable. Your site would normally be hosted (i.e. stored) on another box run by another company.

  2. Nope, not at all.

  3. No difference. You’d still store it on another box (the host’s server). The only impact is in the time it takes you to transfer it to them (using a communications protocol called FTP; don’t worry, most ISPs offer simple instructions on how to upload material to your website if they host it).

  4. Yep. No license required.

  5. Yep, with a “but”. 99.99999% of the time nobody will mind a link (hey, it may generate traffic for them), but very, very occasionally a company may object. It’s rare, and it’s usually more likely to be because they don’t want to be associated with particular websites (e.g. porn sites linking to Disney), so it’s not a major worry. I’ve never had a problem. If the company didn’t want people looking at its site, it wouldn’t have one. The best bet is to link only to the front page of a website (so you’re not circumventing any important disclaimers or content that that site displays). Never try to pass off someone else’s content as your own by linking to it without fair credits.

  6. Again, no need for a server. The host company’s servers will be permanently online.

  7. Again, no need.

It’s a lot simpler than you’d think. You basically just need to design the pages (and there’s a lot of help here and in general on the web for this), arrange for someone to host it (whether a free online company like GeoCities or through your ISP) and then upload it (and there are usually fairly straightforward instructions for doing this).

3

All right. This reminds me of a GQ I’ve been meaning to ask. I would like to buy my own domain name and move my page from the inadequate server that now hosts it (Netscape’s Site Central).

  1. Where’s the best deal on a domain name?
  2. Where’s the best deal on hosting your own domain name?

Maybe this should be a thread of its own. Is this a hijack? Somehow I don’t think this is a hijack.

4

I’m afraid I can’t speak for the US. Owning your own domain name can cost (in the UK) between £10 and £100pa, depending on the additional services you want (e.g. do you want the name only, or for them to host the site?) and the reputation of the company. It makes sense, IMHO, to pay a little more for a reputable and stable company.

I personally get my domain name (RRP £94pa) free: it’s a gimmick from one of the ISPs I use. If it wasn’t free, I would probably just stick with the less catchy free ones from my other ISPs. As long as it’s not some twenty word monstrosity, I can live without something absolutely unique.

5

Here’s how I did it. There’s no web site there anymore, just an ftp.

I have roadrunner (cable). You will want some kind of dynamic i.p. client, because your i.p. will change every once in a while. I like the one from dns2go.com, but there are others. This will make “yourname.dns2go.com” for example resolve to whatever the i.p. on your computer is currently. Through your registrar you should be able to have your domain name resolve to “yourname.dns2go.com”, or at worst redirect to it.

Other than that, you will need a web server program. Sambar is a good one, lots of options, and easier one to use is Xitami. This is the program that will actually answer http requests and stuff like that.

That should cover it, if I wasn’t clear about anything, let me know.

6

sorry, that should be

http://www.sambar.com

http://www.imatix.com

7

Yes, it’s possible. I do it. My website ( http://www.baxter-jenkins.com – It’s a little bare at the moment, since I been redesigning it after my wedding ) is hosted from my spare bedroom over a DSL line. You have to think seriously about what you’re trying to accomplish to decide what to do and how to do it.

If you want to host your own domain (i.e. http://www.yourdomain.com) from home, you pretty much have to have a static IP address. You have to poke around a bit to find a provider in your area that will give you a static IP. Most cable modem providers, and the telco DSL providers (Verizon, Bell South, …) only give dynamic IP addresses to most residential customers. You may have to pay for business class service to get a static IP. Some third party DSL providers will give you a static IP. My provider charges me ~$90.00 a month for 2 static IPs, 1.5Mbs/download and 387kbs/upload. Registering your domain name will cost you ~$30/year.

Next, you want to be sure your ISPs Acceptible Use Policy allows you to run a server. Some do, but many don’t. Also be sure that they don’t charge you for using above some arbitrary amount of bandwith a month. (Some start charging big bucks if you use > 2 - 10 Gb/month.) That might seem like a lot, but the day you sight gets linked to from http://slashdot.org will end up costing you.

Think about what you want to do with the site. If it’s just hosting a low traffic site for your family and friends, sharing your vacation photos and the like, then doing it from home is no problem. But if you want to host the next SDMB and get 100,000 hits a day, you’re better off paying someone else to host for you.

Realize that you are going to be responsible for sysadmining the machine, and that people will try to hack into your server. I see four or five atempts per week.

You can do this off of your desktop machine that you use for other things, but if you get any level of traffic at all, you will probably want do get a machine that is dedicated to being your webserver. Bigger and faster are always better. As a point of refference, my webserver (which also works as a email and sometimes ftp server) is a dual PIII 500Mhz box with 256MB of RAM) I can handle more traffic than my bandwith will allow.

You will also have to decide on what OS to use. It can be done on windows, but I would recomend using one of the many free linux distributions. It requires a learning curve if you’ve never used Unix before, but the end result will be much better that hosting on Windows.

If you have any other questions ask away.

8

Wow. This is GREAT. Okay, I’ve decided not to do this out of my office. It sounds for a variety of reasons like it’s smarter, safer and easier to let someone else maintain a static i.p., and just feed the web site and updates to them. Seems like a reasonable expenditure of funds.

I can get the initial pages designed for free, I’ve two friends who do fairly high-end work of this nature for a living. Learning to feed new video and stills and text to the web site for updates can’t be THAT hard.

It sounded neat. Now that I’m reading this stuff, it doesn’t sound so neat. Thank you all- decision made. However, this seems to have spawned some good discussion.

I’m putting my soldering iron away. :slight_smile:

Cartooniverse

9

Thanks Cartoon, for the kind mention! I just love to see more people get websites. They are such fun!

So - are your designer friends going to do the hosting for you? Because if you are open to web hosts, I like mine, http://www.softcomca.com. They are only $10 a month - but seem reliable. Tech support answers my questions reasonably promptly. Unlimited traffic. Though if you are planning on having A LOT of web traffic, then I cannot say how it’d do - it might get slow. All I know is that it is fine for the modest amount of traffic that my domains get.

And buying a domain is no big deal. It costs between $20 - $35 per year, depending on who you go with.

Looking forward to seeing your site! I know it is going to be very nifty…

10

Um. I hate to repeat myself, but there’s still one fairly important question unanswered.

Are you planning to set up the website yourself (with your friends’ help) and have it hosted somewhere else, or are you actually planning to host it yourself on your own web server?

11

Um, it’s an important question that I ignored up there, sorry mattk!! I’m planning to set it up with the help of the Pros from Dover, and have it hosted elsewhere. Somewhere far away. Somewhere where I can’t smell the freon oozing from the Cray Unit Building :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

I’ve some ideas, and have to gather more recent video, and then find out about scanning in photos and such, and storage and delivery formats, then go to the builder and build the thing.

How’s that sound?

12

Cool, thanks Cartooniverse.

It’s really very easy to do it that way.