Server and Hosting ?s

[dirtyp]

Im turning my blog into a website. I get around 30k visits a month. I was going to go with go daddy but im not completely sold.

Am I better off with a small server as a host? I have plenty of spare parts and even seen a a dual 533 server for 30 bucks. Maybe a little slow but isnt it mostly about the hard drives?

I want to domain my blog for the branding purpose and since I make money its paying for itself.
Im kinda new to the web site side of things but im moving along nicely.

Now the server im clueless about. Is it possible to sell hosting space form my server or internet services?

http://waronyou.blogspot.com

[faulkner132]

If you want to host your own server, you will need to put it in a data center somewhere on a co-location plan. Depending on where you live, there may or may not be one close by.

This is a bit expensive as you have to pay for rack space and for bandwidth. Unless you can make ~$300-500 per month, you probably will not be able to cover your costs of using a data center and sub-letting your server to other web masters would be a good idea for additional income.

If you are going to sub-let then you need to have a respectable machine (look on eBay for Dell Poweredge servers), knowledge of DNS/WWW/EMail servers, not to mention invest in the OS and any required software you would need. Additionally, you would have to be available to answer any customer support questions and send/collect billings.

Getting into the hosting business isn't a light undertaking, it requires an investment in time and money. In your case, I would stick with shared hosting, just get a solid host and a monthly plan which suites your needs. Avoid any hosting which is under $10 a month.

[dirtyp]

Thanks, Its one of those things that sounds good when you think about it. I thought I could use a server off dsl as my host?

So im looking at godaddy to register and maybe hostgator to host(600gb - 6000gb tansfer). Since I embed videos and pics with html it should do. I ask since its around 10 bucks. I have no way off knowing what my bandwidth is now.

How much space will a forum take up? I disabled avatars to keep it smaller.

Currently i have around 35000 viewers to 3 news blogs. I plan on directing them towards this baby. With the forum It should keep the people busy. Im 60% done, I used wordpress since its easy. Using apache to edit on my pc. Thats when I thought hey I can use this program to host my site.

I think I read a post where you said you did it?

[faulkner132]

I thought I could use a server off dsl as my host?
This is against ISP's residental plan TOS. You would have to upgrade your account to a business account and make sure you have at least a T1 connection (upload bandwidth is going to be what is most important).

The problem with running a server out of your house is if your Internet/Power/whatever goes out, your site is down. This saves money in the short term, but I wouldn't recommend you run a 35,000 hits a day site from your house.

As for your software, Linux+Apache or Windows Server+Apache/IIS... either will run Wordpress just fine.

[etownguy]

You may want to check out Amazon's S3 services (http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261).

Good Luck.