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Who wouldn't like a website of their own?
Even if you don't know what you would use it for, a website, or just a server alone, is something very useful. And fun.
I found myself in need of a website. But not one from a "Create your own website" site. Because it's never your own if you get it from one of those. You either end up with .whatever.com and the end of the URL, or you can bearly change the appearance of the site. You really can't get what you want from one of those.
So, I set off on something I had been planning for a long time. Creating my own, real website.
Even if you don't know what you would use it for, a website, or just a server alone, is something very useful. And fun.
I found myself in need of a website. But not one from a "Create your own website" site. Because it's never your own if you get it from one of those. You either end up with .whatever.com and the end of the URL, or you can bearly change the appearance of the site. You really can't get what you want from one of those.
So, I set off on something I had been planning for a long time. Creating my own, real website.
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Signing UpStep 1What You Need
You don't need a lot to make a server. But some things make it much easier. Here's a list of things you should have to make it much easier, and then a list of basic list of things.
Best List:
An Extra Computer To Use as a Server (Preferably a Desktop)
A Computer Other Then The New Server
Internet (Preferably with wires, but wireless works too)
A Brain (Or Another Brain To Help You Out)
Minimal List:
A Computer
Internet
For my server, I used an old computer built from parts I trash picked.
For a very over used saying, "One mans trash is another mans treasurer" is very true.
Or in this case, one mans trash is another mans website.
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I guess it depends on how many people you think will be visiting, and the content of the website. If your going to have a lot of audio, video, or pictures, you'll want a larger hard drive to store it all. And if you think you'll have a lot of people visiting, more RAM might be a good idea. But still, any old computer is fine really.
And even if you start with a small amount of memory and RAM, you could always upgrade later on. It takes a while to get any website noticed, and it even took me a very long time to get listed on Google. So starting small is always fine.
and also... Whatif I need to upload >1 website... how can I add those files to htdocs???
There's a version of Apache for almost every operating system imaginable, so you shouldn't have much trouble. I wish I could tell you more, but I've never had a chance to play around with any Apple computers before.
I usually don't use one because as long as you're smart about things, you don't usually run into a virus. You might, but usually not. And because most anti-virus programs have a tendency to block incoming and outgoing traffic, so they don't always make it easy to run a server.
That's not always true, though, but it's what works for me.
Gnoseon
Use ssh instead. It's encrypted and builtin to Mac and Linux computers.
For windows users, you can download putty
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
It's port 22, thought I'd suggest you have the outside port something else, to make it harder for people to guess.
Otherwise what happens is you get all this set up. Works great. Then some day (at the most inconvenient moment) some little old lady in Timbuctu logs in and the DHCP feeds you a new ip address. Uh oh. No workee!
Now you have to drop everything and re-set-up your domain name. That is, if you even noticed that it went down. Grrrr!
http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/win32/