Home Server

[Ryon]

I was wondering, how would I go about making a home server that can host websites? I'm not looking to run Windows on it and run it with XAMP or something, I want it to be fully functional and be able to host websites, webmail, MySQL databases, etc.

[TheProfessionalAmateurs]

To be honest, it's not worth hosting your own website. Just use something like GoDaddy to host your website for pretty cheap.

[Computer Encrypter]

1 minute ago, TheProfessionalAmateurs said:

To be honest, it's not worth hosting your own website. Just use something like GoDaddy to host your website for pretty cheap.

Thats probably the solution

[evilarceus]

I'd use a Linux distro like Ubuntu or Debian for that.

This tutorial helped me to set up a LAMP stack (for Ubuntu): https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu-16-04

 

Of course, setting up a domain will cost money.

[Ryon]

6 minutes ago, TheProfessionalAmateurs said:

To be honest, it's not worth hosting your own website. Just use something like GoDaddy to host your website for pretty cheap.

 

5 minutes ago, Computer Encrypter said:

Thats probably the solution

Thanks, but I'm not looking for a third party to host my website for me, I want to host it myself for security purposes as companies like GoDaddy can be social engineered to give out information.

[Ryon]

Just now, wrathoftheturkey said:

Hardware: depends on your needs. Whatever you decide on, though, I'd use Ubuntu and get the LAMP stack the other guy mentioned. You'll still need to rent a domain though

What would I do for when it came to outgoing and incoming mail?

[JefferyD90]

32 minutes ago, Ryon said:

I was wondering, how would I go about making a home server that can host websites? I'm not looking to run Windows on it and run it with XAMP or something, I want it to be fully functional and be able to host websites, webmail, MySQL databases, etc.

As long as it doesn't need to be super high performance (like less than 3-5 users at a time) just use a Raspberry Pi.

[samiscool51]

setting up a domain on a server is hard

windows, linux you name it, it's hard

 

the best webhosting software i know of is zpanel http://www.zpanelcp.com/

for email hMailServer https://www.hmailserver.com/

 

you use CMD to redirect the domain you want to your IP address (can't remember how to do this)

if you own windows server then use the addons you can get from server manger

[Jarsky]

13 hours ago, Ryon said:

I was wondering, how would I go about making a home server that can host websites? I'm not looking to run Windows on it and run it with XAMP or something, I want it to be fully functional and be able to host websites, webmail, MySQL databases, etc.

 

- Install Linux (for newbie I recomment Ubuntu or CentOS)

- Install Apache or Nginx

- Install PHP7.0 FPM (this is the FastCGI implementation of PHP)

- Install any other additional apache/nginx mods

- Install MariaDB (better/faster than MySQL)

- Install PHPMyAdmin or similar (easier to manage databases than CLI)

- Install other security like fail2ban, etc...

- Configure IPTables ports and drop rules

- Configure Virtualhosts for your webserver

- Setup Domain name with registrar and configure host records

- Generate an RSA Key and on your server and get an SSL certificate

- Install the SSL certificate and CA certificates on your webserver. Convert into a PEM if needed by your webserver (depending which one you go for)

- Configure your Webserver settings & SSL Ciphers so you aren't open to attacks like Heartbleed, etc...

- Configure Linux user groups and sudoers access

- Install and configure an FTP daemon - personally i use vsftpd most of the time and put users into an ssh deny group.

- Decide on your webmail application e.g Roundcube and install and configure to your mail relay service.....assuming you arent trying to run mail on this same server?

- Preferably disable SSH password access to the server, and use certificate authentication.

- Install and configure a log analyser to analyze the various logs for the various applications/services. Possible SNMP trapping as well - there are free trapping platforms like Nagios that you can use for Linux.

 

 

Just wondering though....are you a security engineer, and are all your devices on your home network secured? Because tbh, If you're saying your biggest issue with using a host is security, and you're asking people how to set up a box to host websites.....there's a huge security hole here, which is a bigger risk than social engineering. And that is lack of security knowledge, and lack of monitoring.

 

[Ryon]

8 hours ago, Jarsky said:

 

- Install Linux (for newbie I recomment Ubuntu or CentOS)

- Install Apache or Nginx

- Install PHP7.0 FPM (this is the FastCGI implementation of PHP)

- Install any other additional apache/nginx mods

- Install MariaDB (better/faster than MySQL)

- Install PHPMyAdmin or similar (easier to manage databases than CLI)

- Install other security like fail2ban, etc...

- Configure IPTables ports and drop rules

- Configure Virtualhosts for your webserver

- Setup Domain name with registrar and configure host records

- Generate an RSA Key and on your server and get an SSL certificate

- Install the SSL certificate and CA certificates on your webserver. Convert into a PEM if needed by your webserver (depending which one you go for)

- Configure your Webserver settings & SSL Ciphers so you aren't open to attacks like Heartbleed, etc...

- Configure Linux user groups and sudoers access

- Install and configure an FTP daemon - personally i use vsftpd most of the time and put users into an ssh deny group.

- Decide on your webmail application e.g Roundcube and install and configure to your mail relay service.....assuming you arent trying to run mail on this same server?

- Preferably disable SSH password access to the server, and use certificate authentication.

- Install and configure a log analyser to analyze the various logs for the various applications/services. Possible SNMP trapping as well - there are free trapping platforms like Nagios that you can use for Linux.

 

 

Just wondering though....are you a security engineer, and are all your devices on your home network secured? Because tbh, If you're saying your biggest issue with using a host is security, and you're asking people how to set up a box to host websites.....there's a huge security hole here, which is a bigger risk than social engineering. And that is lack of security knowledge, and lack of monitoring.

 

Thank you for your very detailed reply, I'm just feeling around and trying to get myself familiar with such things until I am fully ready to launch the project which still has a very long time to go.