Hanley

Hi guys

As far as web-site design and hosting etc goes I'm afraid I don't have a clue.

I registered a domain name yesterday and I'm going to try and design my own website, nothing special, just a family website.

After looking at hosting costs, I just paid £30 for 20MB storage for 12 months, I wondered if there is any reason why I can't host the site myself.

This is my current set-up at home:

4MB internet connection (this will be 10MB within 2 months)
Linksys WRT54G wireless router
1 Windows 2003 Server with IIS
1 desktop pc

Can I design the website and host it on my server?

If so, I'm assuming I need to forward the requests for my website to my external IP address, how do I then pass this to my server. Do I use port forwarding on the router to forward port 80 TCP to my server?

Sorry if these are lame questions

GaryScoobNCBR

Yep you can host this yourself...easy peasy (ish)

Setup your router so that all request for port 80 get forward to your server machine.

Make sure iis is running with a test webpage, you can view on your local IP address to test.

Then once your sure your iis is running ok just get your domain name people to forward the domain to your external Ip address.

*edit the main problem with hosting at home is the upload speed. If your only hosting 1 site without much bandwidth you should be fine though.

Dave_A

also, make sure your isp doesn't have any rules against hosting sites using the connection, some don't allow it.

Dave
www.scoobyphotos.com

HankScorpio

If you're on 4 going to 10, presumably that's BlueYonder?

If so, you only have 380 k upload (which is your viewers download) so not that great for hosting but as long as you keep your content small, shouldn't be an issue.

Your ISP may also be assigning dynamic adresses and although they'll usually be the same, they can change which will cause problems. In that case, you'd need to use some kind of dynamic DNS like http://netservers.co.uk/dynamic.html

Iain Young

Also make sure you have rock solid firewall protection installed if you are opening up your computer to everyone on the internet!!!

Hanley

Thanks guys

Set it up and it tested okay running from my server.

Content will only be minimal, if it changes I will look at external hosting.

My LinkSys WRT54G is firewalled and I'm only port forwarding port 80 to my server - is that strong enough?

Cheers