Want to host my own site.

[HaloAddict19]

I am interested in hosting a website. I know people will suggest that I have someone else host it but I want to do it myself. I like these kind of learning experiments. I have a computer that I can use to host it(P4 i think 2.4GHz, 768MB ram, 60GB IDE) and I am familiar with Dreamweaver. I asked a friend and he said I would probably end up using Apache to host the site. I contacted my ISP and they don't block port 80 and I have a sub-domain through dyndns.com. I am thinking for now I will use the website to host some files so I can access them remotely, and probably some other stuff, maybe SMTP, FTP, dedicated game server, host a forum, etc. Let me know any other information that you think I should have before trying this (I did take a quick peek at the BYO Server article, but didn't have time to read the whole thing).

[Force Flow]

Essentially, a webserver can be the same as a PC, especially if you're just starting out and aren't expecting a lot of traffic.

However....

Backups are important.

Security and updates are important (to prevent malicious mischief).

[HaloAddict19]

Yeah I am aware of the security risk associated with hosting a web server. The traffic is going to be minimal so I don't think I have to worry about that. I was thinking I would set up remote desktop over internet to keep it up to date since it will be left at the house and I leaving for school August 29th, but I am not sure if that will create a security risk as well.

[Petef56]

This article looks very informative...

How to Host Your Own Website for Free
http://www.wikihow.com/Host-Your-Own-Website-for-Free

---pete---

[faulkner132]

If you are hosting it on your own personal computer, make sure this is allowed under your ISP's terms of service. If you only have residential service, this is most likely not allowed in your service agreement.

Just be careful.