How Begin Web Hosting ?

[naga]

I like to start web hosting. I want host 3 sites.
Can anybody help me. How to take off from the begin.

Naga

[Mac Medic]

I just figured this out last night, im gonna write up some instructions and post them later. Now i have 3 sites with 1 IP address

[Mac Medic]

If you need more detailed info then PM me.

I’m now hosting three web sites with one dynamic IP address, for those of you who are interested here’s how I did.

I started by visiting www.dyndns.org and creating a free dynamic DNS account. From there I logged onto the dynamic DNS section and created three new hosts for my web sites. For example if one of my web sites was named www.ABC.com I created a host named abc.dyndns.org for it. I created all three under my one account name so that I can update the IP address for all three at once. From there I had to download the dynamic DNS client which would update my IP address as it changes with the dyndns service. All of this was the simple part.

Next I had to configure the server, I'm going to skip a bit here as I was running XP professional and the long and short of it was that I was only able to host one site using IIS, I did try virtual servers under Apache but I couldn't figure it out, maybe I'll work on that in the future. So I ended up installing Windows 2000 server which allows multiple web sites to be hosted on one IP address. Fire up IIS under 2000 server and add new web sites for the sites you wish to host, which starts a wizard allowing you to pick the folder your website is in to be served. Under the properties for these new sites change the default port number to a new number, I used port 80 for the first site, port 81 for the second site and port 82 for the third site. Again, this was fairly easy. Of course you will have to have the sites built and on the server prior to this.

Now I had to direct traffic to the site. Again let's assume my address is www.ABC.com, I would have to forward this address to my dyndns.org address and specify the port to use. So for example website 1 uses the domain www.abc.com, which I would then link to http://abc.dyndns.org which in turn forwards it to my IP address. As I set website 1 to use port 80 there is no need to specify a port in its URL as 80 is the default port. Website 2 www.abcd.com forwards to http://abcd.dyndns.org:81/index.htm notice I added port 81 to the URL in addition to the index to be served. If I did not list the index it would present the visitor with a list of files not html. And for website 3 www.abcde.com forwards to http://abcde.dyndns.org:82/index.htm , naturally if you don't own a domain such as ABC.com all you need to do it is use the dyndns URL including the port number and index file to be served. As long as you keep your dyndns host sites IP address updated (and the client you download does this for you)everything will be gravy.

And that is how I started serving three web sites with one dynamic IP address. I hope this helps somebody.

[mairving]

If you want to start hosting, the first thing that I would do besides reconsidering it is to start out small and learn from there. You can become a reseller quite easily and cheaply to learn the ropes. Hosting sites on your home system is not the best solution. The main reasons against doing this are: What kind of connection do you have to the Internet. Using Cable or DSL, can get you kicked off so read your service agreement with them. A couple of other things to consider are: that you will have to have a machine that is always on or your sites will be down. Still another to consider is security. Anyone can set up a server, but can you secure it. It can be difficult with Apache, nearly impossible with IIs.

[Mac Medic]

or, you could just go for it. I got a lot of satisfaction in telling my hosting companys to sod off, so for me it is well worth it.