In need of advice

I am ready to put my first server up and need some advice (and possibly some help once it's up, but that is still a bit off).

I have a pc I was thinking of using. 1000mhz athlon, 512 PC2100, a 60gig HD. Will this be sufficient to host a mostly text based site with a moderate amount of images?

I have also just upgraded my dsl to 3mbs up and 385k up. Will this be enough bandwidth for roughly 5k users at 3 logins per day?

Also if anyone who knows mysql and php has some spare time I will probably need some pointers.

Thanks,

The PC sounds fast enough to me. If you're only hosting text based sites an images (ie no server side scripting like PHP/ASP) you don't need too powerful a server, and what you've got looks fine.

Not sure what you mean about the DSL: "3mbs up and 385k up". I guess you mean 3Mbps down and 385Kbps up. I'm not sure if this is enough for the users, but don't forget that to transfer data to clients you'll be using the upload bandwidth, which is only 385Kbps, not the faster download speed of 3Mbps.

I didn't think the bandwidth would be enough. Thx for the advice

The PC is far more than fast enough. I'm hosting my web site, plus email and some other things, on a Pentium II 350MHz. And it's plenty fast. Your bottle-neck is the bandwidth.

How much bandwidth you need is entirely a function of the number of hits per day, times the average data sent per hit.

Is it a dynamic site?
Also, is it open to the public (ie not secure with no logins)?
If so, web cache servers will help out a bit as they will stop content being grabbed every time

From what you say the PC is adequate - providing you are not planning to use it as your main desktop PC.

The upload time is what the users will see even if they have a fast download connection. Basically what you connect to is what you can donwload at. With the amount of users you say (this is a lot) you will have I would expect you would get a slow running site and more than a couple of users at once would realy trip things up. I know its free but why not try something like a fasthosts business package - it is £16 per month gives you very good stats - full control pannel management 24/7 service and top quality hardware!