Can I host my own website

[FoxAxe]

I have left over parts some Athlon cpu and propaply something like radeon 290x for a gpu

Would I be able host my own website and what other expenses would I have to pay? electricity, domain im guessing? Am I missing something?

The website would have to process and store large ammounts of texts(pdf) and maybe pictures later on

Are my parts be able to handle this or is it even possible? Or should I rent a website?

and In practicality how is it done?

 

[OJTheAviator]

You might check that your ISP won't shut you down for running a server off a residential connection. I know Verizon officially says you can't, but I've set up web servers and connected remotely (although it's just been myself connecting).

[dj_ripcord]

Totally possible.

For windows, there's a program called XAMPP that sets out the framework for a simple website pretty easily. There's one for linux as well called LAMPP. Then I would recommend you install something like Wordpress or other web development software to make the whole thing a breeze. Then you don't have to worry about HTML or CSS.

 

Domain name should cost you somewhere between $5 to $25 depending on the domain name and the domain distributor.

 

Edit: to follow up on @OJTheAviator , some ISP's block port 80. Which is the default port for HTTP. If they do, you can run your site on a different port but you will need to know that you have to tack a ":[PORT_NUM]" at the end of the URL.

For example, instead of "http://thisismysite.com" you would have to do "http://thisismysite.com:500"

[FoxAxe]

2 minutes ago, dj_ripcord said:

Totally possible.

For windows, there's a program called XAMPP that sets out the framework for a simple website pretty easily. There's one for linux as well called LAMPP. Then I would recommend you install something like Wordpress or other web development software to make the whole thing a breeze. Then you don't have to worry about HTML or CSS.

 

Domain name should cost you somewhere between $5 to $25 depending on the domain name and the domain distributor.

What about the ammount I can process if its only text? any estimates I know how impossible it is but Im guessing you have a more educated guess than I have.

and thanks I will surely try it out!

[FoxAxe]

6 minutes ago, OJTheAviator said:

You might check that your ISP won't shut you down for running a server off a residential connection. I know Verizon officially says you can't, but I've set up web servers and connected remotely (although it's just been myself connecting).

ah, I wouldn't have known that thanks a lot  I will have to ask DNA (isp) since I live in Finland might be easier here since the US seems to have a lot of dumb restrictions that we don't have. At the same time internet is like 10 times more expensive in the US

[dj_ripcord]

1 minute ago, FoxAxe said:

What about the ammount I can process if its only text? any estimates I know how impossible it is but Im guessing you have a more educated guess than I have.

and thanks I will surely try it out!

I'm not worried about processing power for what you're doing. I think a RPi could run your site pretty easily. That is, if you're just running something basic with very few plugins and no crazy images on the homepage. Which, since it's for personal use, I doub't you will be using.

[Mira Yurizaki]

ISPs probably won't outright shut you down as long as the traffic is reasonable. "Server" is a pretty broad term and literally any device that's in your network listening for a remote connection request is a server.

[FoxAxe]

1 minute ago, dj_ripcord said:

I'm not worried about processing power for what you're doing. I think a RPi could run your site pretty easily. That is, if you're just running something basic with very few plugins and no crazy images on the homepage. Which, since it's for personal use, I doub't you will be using.

I'm actually trying to create it into a business with an actual profit model but at least it will handle it at the beginning (if this ever succeeds :D) 

found a market gap with some uncharted waters

I know this is not the place to ask but do I need a patent? Or is there even a way to stop copycats?

[dj_ripcord]

If you have an idea for a business, you may want to get a DBA or LLC. As well as a Trademark once you get a logo and name. Look into registering those with your state. Legalzoom can help you but it's a little expensive. That will help you protect your brand.

 

I say, use the server to build your website. Keep it offline until you're ready. Then once you are, back up your Wordpress database (assuming you build your site with that) and buy a hosting plan from an actual provider such as BlueHost or HostGator.

 

They will make sure your site is up 24/7 and will help you make sure everything is peachy once you get up and running.

[FoxAxe]

18 minutes ago, dj_ripcord said:

If you have an idea for a business, you may want to get a DBA or LLC. As well as a Trademark once you get a logo and name. Look into registering those with your state. Legalzoom can help you but it's a little expensive. That will help you protect your brand.

 

I say, use the server to build your website. Keep it offline until you're ready. Then once you are, back up your Wordpress database (assuming you build your site with that) and buy a hosting plan from an actual provider such as BlueHost or HostGator.

 

They will make sure your site is up 24/7 and will help you make sure everything is peachy once you get up and running.

I haven't yet looked into this too much so, will the trademark protect only my business name or will it help with protecting the idea? hard to explain, but im worried once I get up and running someone with a bigger funds might be able to makes a similar service advertise it more and basically make it better faster than I can. Im guessing that's just the free market but that's rough 

I guess win for the consumers

The original idea is basically the whole business any average Joe like myself can pretty much make it happen. So, I'm guessing the competition is going to be rough. Its hard work 24/7 to get a head start   

gdpr is going to be a problem too....

Well I will look into this once I have the time and stop bothering you

once again Thanks to you all  for the help especially you dj_ripcord!

[mariushm]

 

Yes, you can host a website from home, but there are a few gotchas  and fineprint.

 

The minimum stuff you need is a domain name - you can buy a .com or .net or .org domain for around 10-15$ a year, from various registrars (I use and recommend Namecheap.com). There are cheaper domains like .info or others, some cost very little for the first year, then regular price after the first year, or they're cheap every year.

 

You don't HAVE TO buy a domain, you can also use free domain services, like for example afraid.org  which allows you create and use  yourname.afraid.org which could be enough for a personal blog, or something like that.

 

Once you have the domain name, you just point it to your IP address. 

Your router or modem receives an IP address from the ISP and this is where it's important to know if you have a fixed IP address (which would be ideal) or if you have a dynamic IP address (is your IP address changing every time you restart the modem/router? Does it change periodically?)  

Every time your IP address changes, your website becomes unreachable until you update the DNS settings to point your domain name to the new IP address - the update is simple but propagation can take from 5-10 minutes to a whole day for some people, various DNS servers around the world cache IP addresses for various periods of time, so they don't instantly know you changed the IP address.

 

After this, you have to check the terms of your subscription, some ISPs don't allow hosting at home for commercial purposes (like you creating a VPN server at home and letting people share your internet connection, or you having a commercial website at home).  A personal blog, a fan site, something that only makes a few dollars from ads on the pages may not be considered commercial by them.

Few block port 80 by default (the default for websites) but you could configure your website to use encryption 24/7 in which case all traffic would work on port 443, which fewer ISPs would block completely.

 

Another problem you will face is that most likely you will not be able to send or receive mails with your IP address. The IP address you get from your ISP is typically from a group of IP addresses that your ISP voluntarily submits to various spam filtering organizations and they're put in a category that pretty much says "this is coming from a residential/home user IP address, reject the message as there's a high chance it's infected computer" so if you set up an email server on your home connection, all the emails you sent will automatically be classified as spam.

The workaround that would be to either contact your ISP to give you a business IP address (unlikely, they'd probably tell you to upgrade to a business account that's 2-3x or even 10x more expensive per month) or you could use a service like sendgrid.com or sendinblue.com  or other such services.

These would not be good to receive emails, but they can be used to send emails to people - for example let's say you want to set up a forum and you can't disable "send email with password reset information" or "send email to confirm user is genuine during account creation" or maybe you want to send an email once person's order is complete,  so for really low volume of emails you could even keep it free, or as low as 5-10$ a month for going over the free threshold.

 

That WAMPP thing is basically a package that has Apache web server, PHP and MySQL and I think an email server ... you can install Apache separately from Apachelounge.com (they make Windows builds for Apache) , PHP from the official website and for database you can use MariaDB, an 100% compatible with MySQL open source database (basically original developers of MySQL sold it to Oracle and then continued working on what was MySQL but all improvements are released as MariaDB)

If you follow the instructions you can set up a simple website in minutes.

 

[AbsoluteFool]

Just as a friendly advice. I host my own webserver and while setting it up i found cloudflare has a free plan. Could be worth checking out as it will give atleast some protection.

[FoxAxe]

8 hours ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Just as a friendly advice. I host my own webserver and while setting it up i found cloudflare has a free plan. Could be worth checking out as it will give atleast some protection.

Ah, that's a nice thing to know

thanks!