home hosting question

Hi, I would like to host my site on my own PC at home. Could anyone tell me what steps should I take? Thanks in advanced.

I wouldnt do it on your own PC. I would get an old box and set it up on that. Do you know Linux? That is the better choice than Windows since it has better security and stability.

If you are going to use Windows make sure you put a firewall on the machine to block off the security holes windows has. Don't rely on Windows XP's built in firewall, it sucks.

Are you going to be hosting any scripting languages on the box?
Are you going to be hosting any databases on the box?

I would reccommend Apache as a webserver but this can't be used if you plan to host ASP pages. If its going to be PHP or standard HTML use Apache. If you do have to use ASP and install IIS make sure you download all the patches for it because before you know it you will be infected by Nimda or CodeRed. If you dont know what either of those are I would STRONGLY advise against setting up your own site on your system since you will get hacked since you don't know enough.

If you put a database on your machine make sure that it is secured correctly. DO NOT rely on default installations. They are not secure. Ever. You need to edit the configuration files for Apache and MySQL (or whatever db you are using) and make sure that it is not accepting connections from the internet and make sure you set a password for access. The amount of times I have seen systems with databases accepting root connections from the web is scary.

You havent provided much information as to what you want to do, read through what I have posted and then give me more information as to what you are going to do with the system.

Thanks, I'm thinking of FreeBSD, is it a good OS for a web server ?
I thought of Apache, installing PHP and mySQL too (all new stuff to me). I have these hardwares:

- Intel Celeron 667 Mhz
- Cache: 32 kb level 1, 128 kb level 2
- Memory: 2 * 256 mb SDRAM
- Chipset: Intel 810
- 15 gb hard drive, 5200 rpm

Is that good enough for a web server (my site have a lot of visitors)?

Yeah, that looks to be quite good. FreeBSD is a very good OS to use. Its very efficient and stable. You should use the ports of PHP and Apache rather than compile the source yourself. You will find the ports very up-to-date and the system will be a lot more stable for it.

The best advice I can give is to ech what I said before. Don't ever rely on the default install of software to be secure. Quite often there are many daemons running on a system that are not used. If you dont know what it is, kill the process. If everything still works fine then its not needed and can be removed from the loading script. Also its good to firewall off all ports that you are not using. You are best to keep track of security updates and alerts, you should know what versions of what software you have on the server. Read through security alerts and make sure that your system is not effected. If it is obtain an update right away and make sure its secure.

If you expect a large amount of hits then your internet connection will be the bottle neck in the setup, not your server. The server will provide the information but it will be slowed down by your internet connection if you are on something like ADSL.

Most *nix-based OSes have Apache and srabndard mods built in, so you'll only have to worry about configuration. As far as the computer spacs go, as long as it's enough for your OS, hosting won't put too much strain on it for hosting one site ("a lot" of visitors or not) I'd be more worried about your internet connection speed.

<edit> ^^ beat me to it </edit>

They dont have it 'built-in', they come with the option to install them but its not needed and not included as part of an install unless you specify it.

OS'es like Debian and FreeBSD just install the base and then you add on whatever software you want onto that base.

I meant he probably won't have to download/compile it.

Yeah well I said that in my post.



FreeBSD has the ports project which has ports of heaps of apps which have been made to ensure they work under FreeBSD correctly.

Thanks!

I'm on ADSL. Is it the average speed most web server need? Many of my visitors will come from oversea.

One thing I'm considering is the cache size. Do you think my cache is big enough?

Web serving is not cpu intensive. It only really needs RAM, of which 512MB is plenty to have a fast server. A lot of people have ADSL these days and its a good rule that your server should have better connection than your clients. ADSL is not good for hosting as its really slow sending information on uploads, which is what you need for hosting. A lot of connections only have 64K or 128K uploads in comparision to 128K or 256K downloads. Due to that you are already behind. Now if you have 50 people on your server at once requesting documents you will have a severe bottle neck in the connection.

You said most of your customers will be overseas. This doesn't really affect the connection speed unless they're on dial-up, in which case your connection speed would be sufficient as long as you only have serveral clients at a time.

Too bad most of them use dial-up. In average, I have about 15 - 30 clients at one time, is that ok?

If you know most of them will be on dialup it should be sufficient. As long as you have pages that are not really image heavy and also dont offer 100meg video downloads you should be right

Thanks, my site would be just text mostly. Thanks again guys, I find this place very helpful. Nice day.