Paying for a host vs hosting yourself?

[KhakiHat]

I am new to the networking side of things first and foremost. What would be more beneficial and a better choice between paying someone to host a website and/or media server vs hosting the site yourself? 

 

I would like to learn new things throughout the process, I'm not afraid of putting in any effort nor technical know-how. The site wouldn't be meant for any particular purpose but mostly as a demonstration for myself in means of learning hands on. 

[scottyseng]

Well, if it's for a website that you need to have working for sure, I wouldn't screw around and would just pay a website host (I use Surpass hosting). Also, note that some ISPs will ban port 80 (HTTP) on residential connections to make you cough up the money for a business plan. It's also in general really hard to get 24/7/365 reliability with one server at home. You deal with power outages, internet disconnects, or even server downtime.

 

For media, you could use something like Plex or Emby.

 

If you want to still self host though (Just to learn), linux is pretty popular for that. FTP is pretty standard for transferring files to your website.

[KhakiHat]

5 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Well, if it's for a website that you need to have working for sure, I wouldn't screw around and would just pay a website host (I use Surpass hosting). Also, note that some ISPs will ban port 80 (HTTP) on residential connections to make you cough up the money for a business plan. It's also in general really hard to get 24/7/365 reliability with one server at home. You deal with power outages, internet disconnects, or even server downtime.

 

For media, you could use something like Plex or Emby.

 

If you want to still self host though (Just to learn), linux is pretty popular for that. FTP is pretty standard for transferring files to your website.

The website wouldn't necessarily have to be up 24/7 as it would mostly be for personal use. Is there any hardware requirements for a server operating with linux? I know linux is usually able to run on just about anything.

 

But you also bring up a lot of good points. What is the general rule of thumb for choosing a website host?

[scottyseng]

1 minute ago, KhakiHat said:

The website wouldn't necessarily have to be up 24/7 as it would mostly be for personal use. Is there any hardware requirements for a server operating with linux? I know linux is usually able to run on just about anything.

 

But you also bring up a lot of good points. What is the general rule of thumb for choosing a website host?

Ah, pretty much Linux runs on everything. I think Apache and Linux are really popular. Or if you have a Windows Server key by some chance, you could learn how IIS works.

 

Well, I would make sure you read their terms and make sure the content you host isn't against their terms. I changed from Inmotion hosting to Surpass hosting because Inmotion doesn't allow adult content (I had nude artwork on my portfolio website). Other thing is I would avoid GoDaddy and I forgot the other one...I remember the popular two weren't so good (They were just really good at marketing). I would double check the specs for the hosting plan. They usually have limits on storage / accounts. Also MySQL support if you want to host wordpress or a e-store.

 

One of my favorite things about having a website host is the domain name e-mail. Makes you look professional to have a custom domain name e-mail.

 

Also, you will need to buy a domain name and point it to your website host.

[KhakiHat]

3 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Ah, pretty much Linux runs on everything. I think Apache and Linux are really popular. Or if you have a Windows Server key by some chance, you could learn how IIS works.

 

Well, I would make sure you read their terms and make sure the content you host isn't against their terms. I changed from Inmotion hosting to Surpass hosting because Inmotion doesn't allow adult content (I had nude artwork on my portfolio website). Other thing is I would avoid GoDaddy and I forgot the other one...I remember the popular two weren't so good (They were just really good at marketing). I would double check the specs for the hosting plan. They usually have limits on storage / accounts. Also MySQL support if you want to host wordpress or a e-store.

 

One of my favorite things about having a website host is the domain name e-mail. Makes you look professional to have a custom domain name e-mail.

 

Also, you will need to buy a domain name and point it to your website host.

Hmm. Those are conditions I would have never even thought to consider.

 

A question about storage. How would I know how much storage I would really need? 

[scottyseng]

Just now, KhakiHat said:

Hmm. Those are conditions I would have never even thought to consider.

 

A question about storage. How would I know how much storage I would really need? 

That's more on what you plan to host. If it's just a portfolio with a few pictures, not much really. If you plan to have videos on your website, space starts to be a concern pretty quick. Most host plans do give you more than enough space for most websites (Unless you really plan on being a hardcore vlogger / have ultra high res images on your website)

 

Also, e-mail size limits...haha...I'm pretty terrible at keeping my inbox clean so I'm at 2GB on my inbox at the moment.

[KhakiHat]

 

3 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

That's more on what you plan to host. If it's just a portfolio with a few pictures, not much really. If you plan to have videos on your website, space starts to be a concern pretty quick. Most host plans do give you more than enough space for most websites (Unless you really plan on being a hardcore vlogger / have ultra high res images on your website)

 

Also, e-mail size limits...haha...I'm pretty terrible at keeping my inbox clean so I'm at 2GB on my inbox at the moment.

I didn't even really know web hosts had storage options ?

[WereCatf]

32 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

I would like to learn new things throughout the process, I'm not afraid of putting in any effort nor technical know-how. The site wouldn't be meant for any particular purpose but mostly as a demonstration for myself in means of learning hands on. 

If it's just for practice-purposes, it doesn't even have to be accessible from the Internet at all and then you don't need a paid host or domainnames. There's nothing stopping you from running all kinds of servers, including a web-server, simply on your own network without any outside-access.

[KhakiHat]

1 minute ago, WereCatf said:

If it's just for practice-purposes, it doesn't even have to be accessible from the Internet at all and then you don't need a paid host or domainnames. There's nothing stopping you from running all kinds of servers, including a web-server, simply on your own network without any outside-access.

What kind of hardware would be recommended?

[WereCatf]

9 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

What kind of hardware would be recommended?

Well, if it's just you using it, it doesn't really matter. If you were running some heavier stuff, like Nextcloud, Wordpress and things like that, it might be a little bit slow, but even an RPi2 can do that. Basically, anything you have on hand is good enough for testing stuff. It's only if/when you actually start to serve other people too that you have to pay more attention to the hardware, and even then slow/inadequate hardware doesn't break anything, it'll just be slow.

[KhakiHat]

14 hours ago, WereCatf said:

Well, if it's just you using it, it doesn't really matter. If you were running some heavier stuff, like Nextcloud, Wordpress and things like that, it might be a little bit slow, but even an RPi2 can do that. Basically, anything you have on hand is good enough for testing stuff. It's only if/when you actually start to serve other people too that you have to pay more attention to the hardware, and even then slow/inadequate hardware doesn't break anything, it'll just be slow.

Thank you for your help.