Reader Question: How to set up a Web server
"I want to create a Web server at my office with several computers all connected to the Internet.... Can I access my web site once configured from any computer so long as it is connected to the Internet?"
My Thoughts
Setting up a computer or network to be an Internet Web address is a bit tricky. But here's a general list of what you need to get started:
- static IP connection to the Internet - It has to be static so that your readers can reliably get to the page
- domain name - while this isn't really required (people can view your pages via the IP address) most people don't feel comfortable going to pages that are hosted on an IP only Once you have a static IP, you can use a domain name registry to register a domain name
- DNS - this doesn't have to be on your own server, in fact, most internet service providers who provide static IP addresses will also provide DNS. But it is required in order to get your domain name to resolve.
- Web server software - such as Apache
- a computer that can run 24/7 - anytime the computer is turned off your website is turned off
Once you have an IP address for the computer with the Web server on it, you should be able to access it from anywhere on the Internet. The only exception is if your IP address is in one of the private IP ranges - either 10.xxx.xxx.xxx or 192.168.xxx.xxx - these will not display outside of your work network and you won't be able to register a domain to them.
More Resources
- Before You Buy Web Server Software
- What Web Server Are You Using?
- Web Security
- Secure Web Sites and Servers
- What is Web Administration? - Hosting, Security, Servers, Logs, Caching
Do you maintain a Web server?
If you maintain your own Web server what things did you need to get it set up? Is there anything missing from my list above? Or do you make do with less? If you can help depash, you can post your ideas in the comments here or reply to the message in the forum.
Comments
Even if the computer hosting the webserver is using a network address in the private IP address ranges on the local network, at some point there will be internet connectivity and a viable inernet IP address will exist at that point. Typically that will be a router, and by setting up the router to forward web server traffic to the appropriate IP address on the local network then it is quite possible for machines with private IP addresses to run web servers accessible from the internet
The short advice “don’t”. Get your site hosted by a commercial ISP.
The main problems are not with the site. Its with security. Its the constant updating of security patches. If you get it wrong you’ll come in one morning and find your site serving Kiddy porn.
So get your site hosted, then if wish to learn more you can install a web server on your office intranet and learn in safety.
It’s not that hard to do!!!! I’m running 2 web servers out of my home. They are old 700mhz computers with Ubuntu server software that is free. If you use Ubuntu with the Perfect server setup it will be secure. There are free dns servers and you can find most of this information on my website, http://www.lonnieworld.com in the web section. There are also allot of free IPS that you can put your site on without spending a dime. All this info can be found at http://www/lonnieworld.com/web.html
Give Operating Systems a check out first.
If you have a spare/donor host, try out ubuntu
or debian (linux). Very Very Very easy to
MAINTAIN if you’re not sitting right at the
computer. email me if you want…we’ll chat.
efk803h@gmail.com
For under £300 ($580) I have set up a Microsoft IIS 6 webserver using their Windows Home Server offering. It has IIS 6.0 and SQL Server 2005 express plus PHP and MySQL. It is ideal as a testing server and the *.homeserver.com redirect because of dynamic IP addresses has worked flawlessly for me.
System I built was Intel Core Duo 1.8Mhz, 3Gb DDR2 Ram, MSI ATX motherboard with onboard graphics and sound, 2×500Gb HDD and a DVD-RW.
WHS is based on Windows Server 2003 and is one of Microsofts better value offerings. It also come with 10 client licenses.