Setting up my own web server using raspberry Pi. Is this a good idea?

[mrchow19910319]

Recently I had the idea to build a personal/technical blog where I can write some stuff about coding as well as other stuff.

1st I thought I just gonna use wordpress. and dont dive into the backend stuff 1st.

then 2 things kind of bothered me: 

1. hosting a website is kind of expensive, at least to me. I am not sure whether I will be consistent with it or not. so paying for 1 year of hosting is kind of "risky" for me.

2. word press theme is not as flexible as building your own site using HTML and CSS. and I kind of get bored of it after trying to do it and set up a basic website. 

 

So, my question is this: 

can i buy a raspberry Pi 3 to host my own website? It will not be a popular one... so I dont expect too many people visiting it and "crashing " it. so for just a simple HTML CSS site with a form on it, can the raspberry pi handle it? 

 

Also I am planning to buy my domain from google domain, and I am located in china. Can I set up my server here? I dont want my site to get blocked because it is a google domain. I have no idea whether this is a legit concern... just a thought. 

 

Also if you worry about whether I am capable of handling backend stuff, dont. I have a ton of patience and a ton of time. The only thing I am worried is that can the pi handle this. Again, I dont want to spend 60$ a year on a web hosting service. 

[mrchow19910319]

Is this guide a good one? 

 

[mrchow19910319]

@Windows7ge

[mrchow19910319]

Or should I just build a low end PC and run it as a server? 

If so, what specs do you guys recommend??? 

[PorkishPig]

11 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Or should I just build a low end PC and run it as a server? 

If so, what specs do you guys recommend??? 

You should stick with editing your posts with more information instead of creating new ones.

 

It depends what you're trying to run on the Pi. If you want to run a personal site that gets a few dozen visitors a week with a CDN such as Cloudflare on top, this is perfect for this hardware. Otherwise, I would suggest buying a cheap VPS from OVH (https://www.ovh.com/world/vps/) for hosting uptime-reliant services such as Discord bots, community forums, or anything that receives frequent repeat traffic.

[mrchow19910319]

4 minutes ago, Homeless Pineapple said:

You should stick with editing your posts with more information instead of creating new ones.

 

It depends what you're trying to run on the Pi. If you want to run a personal site that gets a few dozen visitors a week with a CDN such as Cloudflare on top, this is perfect for this hardware. Otherwise, I would suggest buying a cheap VPS from OVH (https://www.ovh.com/world/vps/) for hosting uptime-reliant services such as Discord bots, community forums, or anything that receives frequent repeat traffic.

also even if I bought my domain at google domain I can still visit it in china right??

i just want to host a personal blog site where I can blog stuff. also just to save money as well. 

I think I will go with raspberry pi. How much storage do I need???

 

[PorkishPig]

19 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

also even if I bought my domain at google domain I can still visit it in china right??

i just want to host a personal blog site where I can blog stuff. also just to save money as well. 

I think I will go with raspberry pi. How much storage do I need???

2

Yes. Domains can be universally accessed. If you're looking to save a few bucks on your domain, I would suggest looking at NameSilo's pricing (https://www.namesilo.com/pricing.php).

Wordpress is pretty lightweight. You shouldn't need more than 16gb of storage.

[mrchow19910319]

3 minutes ago, Homeless Pineapple said:

Yes. Domains can be universally accessed. If you're looking to save additional a few bucks on your domain, I would suggest looking at NameSilo's pricing (https://www.namesilo.com/pricing.php).

Wordpress is pretty lightweight. You shouldn't need more than 16gb of storage.

i don't think that I will use wordpress...

I just write my own HTML CSS javscript to it.. 

 

edit: I think that google domain comes with free privacy protection. and i read some reddit post that someone did not register this on bluepost/hostgator then his/her personal into got leaked or something.

Edited June 28, 2018 by mrchow19910319

[PorkishPig]

5 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

i don't think that I will use wordpress...

I just write my own HTML CSS javscript to it.. 

16gb of storage should still be fine.

[PorkishPig]

10 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

I think that google domain comes with free privacy protection. and i read some reddit post that someone did not register this on bluepost/hostgator then his/her personal into got leaked or something.

This is not how Whois information works. When you register a domain, your registration information becomes publically visible. This is an ICANN standard; your information is not leaked, as you voluntarily making it public when you register a domain.

 

NameSilo includes free Whois protection on all non-region-specific TLDs. The .us TLD requires your submitted Whois information to be public by law.

[mrchow19910319]

2 minutes ago, Homeless Pineapple said:

This is not how Whois information works. When you register a domain, your registration information becomes publically visible. This is an ICANN standard; your information is not leaked, as you voluntarily making it public when you register a domain.

 

NameSilo includes free Whois protection on all non-region-specific. The .us TLD requires your submitted Whois information to be public by law.

ah... I see. Thanks for the clarification. Also another question, if I got my own server, the ONLY thing left that can cost me money is the domain rental right? For example like 10$ per year or something. 

[PorkishPig]

3 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

ah... I see. Thanks for the clarification. Also another question, if I got my own server, the ONLY thing left that can cost me money is the domain rental right? For example like 10$ per year or something. 

This is correct. Most other services, such as email, can be obtained for free from services such as Zoho.

[mrchow19910319]

1 minute ago, Homeless Pineapple said:

This is correct. Most other services, such as email, can be obtained for free from services such as Zoho.

thanks!

[mrchow19910319]

@Homeless Pineapple Heroku has a basic plan that is free, do you think I should choose that? Or deploy locally? 

[Pixel5]

you should absolutely use a premade service as it will run much faster and more reliable then anything you can do at home.

 

i would suggest free trials different hosters offer, for example Amazon has multiple services you can get for free for up to 12 months.

[Windows7ge]

4 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Or should I just build a low end PC and run it as a server? 

If so, what specs do you guys recommend??? 

Hold on.

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

Hold on.

If you're not too serious about it buy a used server. It'll have more power for cheaper than buying new. I'm not a real advocate for people hosting their own websites because it draws attention to your home network and without the right firewall could cause your network to be broken into or taken down.

 

Since you're already paying for a domain you might as well go the rest of the way and have a web hosting service handle the back-end for you. It's more secure for your personal network and I believe some of these business will give you 1 page websites or a couple pages for cheap.

 

And there's this thing called The Great Firewall of China. They lock you out of a lot of the interest. Facebook doesn't exist. Google doesn't exists. Many other popular platforms don't exist. Everybody has to VPN out but even those are starting to get clamped down on. If you have google/YouTube/facebook without a VPN you live in a good area of China.

[mrchow19910319]

6 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

 

nah dude i just use vpn. those site are still being blocked. 

there's a rumor that google will be back to china, but that rumor had been going on for at least 5,6 years. 

 

I see. I think I will host my site on heroku and just use their free plan. Thanks. 

[jde3]

On 6/28/2018 at 9:48 AM, mrchow19910319 said:

Recently I had the idea to build a personal/technical blog where I can write some stuff about coding as well as other stuff.

1st I thought I just gonna use wordpress. and dont dive into the backend stuff 1st.

then 2 things kind of bothered me: 

1. hosting a website is kind of expensive, at least to me. I am not sure whether I will be consistent with it or not. so paying for 1 year of hosting is kind of "risky" for me.

2. word press theme is not as flexible as building your own site using HTML and CSS. and I kind of get bored of it after trying to do it and set up a basic website. 

 

So, my question is this: 

can i buy a raspberry Pi 3 to host my own website? It will not be a popular one... so I dont expect too many people visiting it and "crashing " it. so for just a simple HTML CSS site with a form on it, can the raspberry pi handle it? 

 

Also I am planning to buy my domain from google domain, and I am located in china. Can I set up my server here? I dont want my site to get blocked because it is a google domain. I have no idea whether this is a legit concern... just a thought. 

 

Also if you worry about whether I am capable of handling backend stuff, dont. I have a ton of patience and a ton of time. The only thing I am worried is that can the pi handle this. Again, I dont want to spend 60$ a year on a web hosting service. 

I would recommend not running from your house for a couple of reasons.

A) It's probably outside the terms of your ISP's contract. They generally don't like this. (I have no idea about China ISP's)

B) Some ISP's don't like it to such an extent they block port 80 and 443 inbound to clients. (Verizon is one)

C) Dynamic IP updates are a pain. It can be done but it's best not to bother.

D) If your system is compromised then your home network will be as well. This gives an attacker a starting point to attack your LAN. This can be mitigated with semi-complex firewalling but that is more than what most home users probably will want to do.

 

If you still want to do it that's fine but as an alternative I'll mention that Digital Ocean offers small $5 a month plans that are fast. (You can host outside of China too if you like)

 

I know quite a bit about Apache, so if you have questions about it feel free to post.

[TechyBen]

Webserver hosting (UK anyhow) is around £15 per year. So a simple hardly used (low bandwidth) test server for learning how to code websites/forums/etc is like £1 a month.

 

Else go second hand hardware. AFAIK it can be done on a pi, but it's slow (I had one and an Android dev board for a while, but never got into doing anything on them, was fun using Putty though ).

[mrchow19910319]

6 minutes ago, jde3 said:

 

wow thanks for the explanation! 

I think I will try to host it on heroku (it has a free plan) or check out digital ocean.

[jde3]

1 minute ago, mrchow19910319 said:

wow thanks for the explanation! 

I think I will try to host it on heroku (it has a free plan) or check out digital ocean.

Digital Ocean actually changes by the hour. There are free codes out there too for their advertisers. BSDNOW Podcast is one, Level1 techs might be another. So you can spin it up for small amounts of time and they won't charge you the entire months cost.

[mrchow19910319]

2 minutes ago, jde3 said:

Digital Ocean actually changes by the hour. There are free codes out there too for their advertisers. BSDNOW Podcast is one, Level1 techs might be another. So you can spin it up for small amounts of time and they won't charge you the entire months cost.

so if no one visit my site they wont charge me?? and there is a 5 dollar cap per month???

[jde3]

3 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

so if no one visit my site they wont charge me?? and there is a 5 dollar cap per month???

No, it's a VPS so you get control of the entire server and OS. As opposed to a host where you just get a directory to push files to.

 

They charge on a base rate. $0.007 per hour that works out to $5 per month. The data cap is 2TB (thats plenty for a blog)

 

It would be like putting your Pi out on their network.

[mrchow19910319]

1 minute ago, jde3 said:

No, it's a VPS so you get control of the entire server and OS. As opposed to a host where you just get a directory to push files to.

 

They charge on a base rate. $0.007 per hour that works out to $5 per month. The data cap is 2TB (thats plenty for a blog)

oh... I see. how does digital ocean compares to vultr and such?