Home Hosting Server

[Southern Man]

I have a server machine running Windows 8.1 and i need to find an article about how to turn it into real host server for hosting website(s)

Btw i already have a static IP address assigned to my router (ASUS RT N660U) 

 

I am about to install the IIS and WAMP for hosting both ASP and PHP but i am needing some tutorials about mixing both worlds and setting the router as i have few more computers in the same network

 

Thank you !

[Intersect]

are these websites for local access only or are they going to be internet facing sites? you might want to check with your ISP that they will be ok with you running websites from your connection as its against the terms and conditions of most ISP's  it would be much better for you to do get a cheep hosting package and a domain name.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

IIS would be a lot more secure for hosting live websites on, i don't think you can really lockdown / secure WAMP too much on Windows unless something has changed.

PHP support is really easy to setup on IIS with Microsoft's Web Platform Installer. However keep in mind IIS on Windows 8 has a limit of 10 concurrent requests, which is going to limit you if the sites you host actually get a steady flow of traffic.

[+BudMan MVC]

^ agreed, unless this is just for personal consumption there is really no reason to host websites off a home connection.  I have a few web interfaces, and web pages - like how much electric my house is using, etc.  These are not open to the public.  If I want to access them while remote I vpn in.

 

As already stated quite often it is against the TOS, and besides that normally the upload bandwidth is horrific.  If for testing, doesn't need to be accessed from public for testing.

 

From a cost perspective it never makes sense to host out of your home.  You can get shared hosting for less than it cost to run the machine just from the electric standpoint.  Not counting that any bandwidth you use serving up files comes away from your personal home use bandwidth.  The down time is going to be way higher on a home connection.  Any time you reboot for anything box is offline.

 

Another point you have to ask how to do basic port forward, and setup of IIS, etc.  And you want to expose the box to the wild west of the public internet?  I can see it being exploited and misused in 3, 2, 1 etc..

 

While if you want to play with setting up IIS, etc. etc.  Sure great happy to help if for local use - but open to the public internet.  No dude - don't go down the route, get a webhost be it shared or vps and do your stuff there.  This would be my advice.

 

As to hosting multiple sites off different boxes on your network.  How many public IPs do you have?  BTW having a static has nothing to do with hosting a server off your home connection, dyndns allows for you to always point any fqdn to your IP.. You don't need a static to host up a website.

 

If all you have is 1 public IP, you can not forward http 80 to more than 1 private IP.  So you could host sites off say 81 or 8080 etc and send those ports to different private IPs.  Or on your router you would need to run some sort of reverse proxy that would look at the fqdn requested and send that to the correct private IP hosting, etc.

 

TL;DR - home hosting/webserver to public never a good idea.

[Southern Man]

Thank you for the quick response and answers to my question. It's much appreciated.

 

Actually this is why i want to have my own webserver:

 

1. I have 5 different domains currently hosted with godaddy.

2. Very recently they increased the renewal prices making it non-sense to keep using their service

3. I am more than sure that the long term benefits of starting private webserver will be significant.

 

By the way do you guys tell me that i need to have at least 2 static IP's in order to host those sites?

 

Hmm i didn't know about the 10 concurrent connections limitation of Win 8.1 so i guess Windows Server will suit my needs better!? 

 

Is there any good tutorials so i can see how do i forward the ports and stuff in the router?

 

Thank you again

[Max Norris]

Hmm i didn't know about the 10 concurrent connections limitation of Win 8.1 so i guess Windows Server will suit my needs better!?

Right -- if you're going with IIS and are doing something bigger than for just personal use, you'll want one of the Server editions, the desktop versions are not meant for deployment.. it's great for development or just for a couple of people. Or pick a different web server entirely, whichever, I've done Apache under Windows for a good number of years without issues too, if properly configured that is. Not something I'd recommend on a home broadband connection though as mentioned above, if your ISP even allows it, some don't.

[+BudMan MVC]

You do understand there are 1000's if not 100 of thousands of places to host websites.  How much is godaddy charging you?

 

No you could host 100's of domains off 1 public IP, but you have to use host headers, you would not be able to forward to multiple IPs using just 1 public IP and 1 port.

 

So curious on your cost case here, if your now going to buy windows server to host your stuff.  Which is not really cheap

[Southern Man]

Thank you guys ...

 

Btw godaddy is charging me like $110 for renewing the hosting (Windows Delux plan) and 5 x $15 for the domains

It's almost $200 per year which is maybe not too much but yet it's 3 times more than it was last year.

 

I believe that it's little non-sense to pay three times more for the same thing so i wanted to try my luck with my own webserver.

 

Btw i checked with the ISP and they are totally fine with that unless i host torrents and such. In addition i have the MSDN subscription so i don't have to pay anything extra for the Windows Server.

 

Having all that in mind do you guys still recommend me to stay away from building my own webserver or maybe you changed your mind for a while? THANK YOU SO MUCH AGAIN!!!

[+BudMan MVC]

"In addition i have the MSDN subscription so i don't have to pay anything extra for the Windows Server."

 

Where did you get that idea?  MSDN is not for production use..  What your doing would be production use.

 

Many MSDN subscribers use a computer for mixed use

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Is it mission critical these website's stay on-line and are accessible 24/7? or are they more along the lines of a personal blog?

 

I must admit I taught myself a lot about IIS and Windows Server by starting out configuring IIS to host my own personal Wordpress blog. Their is only so much you can learn in a test lab, plus its more fun to have something live and accessible to the world. I did this on a cheap server though on not on my home connection.

 

Even when you have Wordpress working you would have to get your hands dirty and create some URL rewrite rules, then you might find if you are integrating things with Instagram / Twitter you need to have a list of up to date public certificate authorities defined, which is one of many random things I learned.

 

I have since made my blog accessible on IPV4 and IPV6, all running over https. If you want to learn i dont think your totally crazy, but again to echo Budman i would not host any mission critical websites on my home connection. If I was hosting something at home I would ensure the server was on a different VLAN to all my personal devices.

 

Just remember downtime = loss of revenue, it will work against you in regards to your page rank on search engines, then about all is simply annoying to people wanting to access your website.

 

?I would personally get a cheap dedicated server from OVH: http://www.kimsufi.com/uk/, it's honestly much better than trying to do it from home. The idea of their cheap Kimsufi server's is to do exactly what your doing, "Move from theory to practice" to quote their site.

 

You can't get Windows on the cheap Kimsufi server's any more, however you can tech yourself how to sysprep an Windows Server install, include the drivers required for the server, then use dd to deploy that syspred image over the internet via SSH to your cheap server. That was a fun little project to do and i learned a fair bit from doing that, however that's kind of going off topic!

 

It really depends if you want to learn or need something reliable as to how much of a good idea it is, I can tell you though i've been there and done the whole hosting websites a home thing when I was a teenager. It's not something I would recommend given http://www.ovh.co.uk/web-hosting/''>you can get cheap hosting from

[ITOps]

Thank you guys ...

 

Btw godaddy is charging me like $110 for renewing the hosting (Windows Delux plan) and 5 x $15 for the domains

It's almost $200 per year which is maybe not too much but yet it's 3 times more than it was last year.

 

I believe that it's little non-sense to pay three times more for the same thing so i wanted to try my luck with my own webserver.

 

Btw i checked with the ISP and they are totally fine with that unless i host torrents and such. In addition i have the MSDN subscription so i don't have to pay anything extra for the Windows Server.

 

Having all that in mind do you guys still recommend me to stay away from building my own webserver or maybe you changed your mind for a while? THANK YOU SO MUCH AGAIN!!!

 

You will need to purchase a separate license for Windows Server - http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Windows-Server-2012-R2/productID.288079500 , using the MSDN keys is a violation of the EULA you agreed too.  You can see what you can use for production with an MSDN license here: http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/msdn-subscriptions-vs#SKUDetailList_1

 

Putting up a production internet accessible server also means you will need to manage the security and maintenance of the system and network the websites are hosted on (this should never be your personal computer and hosted on a separate VLAN).  You will have to harden the server that Windows Server is running on (disable unnecessary services, harden the configurations, install, maintain and update the security software, etc.) Are you a seasoned Windows System Administrator, Network Engineer and Cyber Security Engineer?  If not, you do not want to do this as it can cause more real world problems for you then you may be able to see right now.

 

Some of the real world problems you could be allowing into your home can include, getting your other network devices hacked (router, switches, TV, cable box, personal computers, NAS, phones, VOIP systems, security cameras, and other electronic equipment connected to your network wired or wireless).  So unless you have your home network locked up and run a tight ship you might be inviting an unwanted nightmare into your home that you may or may not be able to detect.

[Southern Man]

@BudMan: that's the reason why i want to get rid of godaddy. Buying a new hosting is actually cheaper than renewing the old one though you get less for the price e.g. if you buy a new host plan you will get newer PHP version, newer IIS, newer MSSQL etc. and i feel like they take advantage of me. I can send you screenshot of the checkout if you want. 109 dollars to renew the host plan for 12 months i have no reason to lie to you. Have i?

 

@InsaneNutter: those sites are mainly blogs meaning NO online payments and such if that's your concern. As for the technical details; well i will have to learn once ... now or never lol thank you so much for the input

 

@ITOps: i hear you man about the security and stuff. Hmm i will have to reconsider my decision i believe. 

 

P.S. i think that this OS come as FREE with the WebsiteSpark program but i am not even sure that i still want to host the sites on my own. I will check the cheap hosting links anyway

 

Thank you so much 

[Obry]

Please don't take this personally not trying to be offensive but judging by the types of questions you are asking, chances are your server will be compromised and taken over very quickly unless you are a security expert. Thousands of people constantly look for the next machine to pop up on the public Internet for them to start routing their SPAM and malware through. The more services you expose (HTTP, FTP, etc) the more vulnerable (and the juicier of a target) you become.

 

If GoDaddy is charging you that much there are plenty of other hosts that offer much cheaper hosting. Like others mentioned, namecheap.com is one, dreamhost.com also has cheap plans. If you do some research (aka Google) you will find plenty of host reviews and discussions that will help you find other affordable hosting companies that offer good enough service.

 

Unless you are doing it to learn from and experiment, running a production server from your home is never a good idea. I am a web and mobile app developer and don't even have a desktop computer at home (only use laptops) much less run my own servers at home. It is too much hassle and in the end a lot more expensive.

 

I also have MSDN and it does not allow you to run production servers using it - for that you need to shell out several hundred for Windows Server license as client versions of Windows are limited to 10 connections as others have mentioned - and 10 connections can get exceeded by a single web page with a few included image, css and js files.

[Southern Man]

Advice taken.. i will just change the host company lol 

 

Btw why i cannot mark multiple replies as "Best Answer" ? you all helped me to realize that i should quit the idea to have a webserver at home. 

 

Thank you so much 

[+BudMan MVC]

Like I said in the beginning if was for play and your own personal use, you could host off home.  If you wanted some buddies to hit a site now and then for something, etc.  But it is a risk to host any sort of services to the public, I only allow vpn access into my network.  And you need a cert to auth etc.   I do run a ntp server in the ntp pool, but ntp is simple and I have it locked down tight - all they can do is query for time, etc.

 

I have had account on dreamhost for years, I pay a 120$ a year, but its a toy of mine I don't host any thing of real value.. I use it to play with stuff, I host some personal sites for friends, etc.  I never know when I might get a hair up my ass to host something or play with some new cms, or php script, etc..  So I am not worried about such a low cost.  But I can agree and value your point about rising cost, especially if your trying to make some money, etc..  I have multiple other vps, and seedbox account all over the planet..  If you want good vps site for cheap - my new fav low end is $6 a year   It does what I need it to do, which is allow me a vpn exit point, test for latency from other parts of the world, etc. I have boxes westcoast, eastcoast, dallas, Netherlands, etc. etc.  Which reminds me my one expired, I need to fire up a new one on new cheaper host.  If you want can send you info - they have good deals on their higher end stuff as well.  Not sure if they have windows based - but I would never run that for hosting anything to the public to be honest

 

If you want I can send you a code that can get you 97$ off that 120$ a year rate for your first year.  That would give you hosting on dreamhost for $23 for your first year..  Just let me know be happy to send you the code to let you try them out.   I have been with this since "Account Started On: 2006-08-30"  man the years fly by - have been nothing but happy with services provided..

 

But as other has been saying, lots of fish in the sea - I use to be with godaddy for domains few years back, but very happy with namecheap.  And man is it nice not to get bombed with click this for that upgrade, for x$ get this, sure you don't want to add this, etc.  The upsell on godaddy is horrific..  Namecheap is a nice simple interface that lets you do what you want to do at very reasonable prices for your domains.

[Intersect]

Advice taken.. i will just change the host company lol 

 

Btw why i cannot mark multiple replies as "Best Answer" ? you all helped me to realize that i should quit the idea to have a webserver at home. 

 

Thank you so much 

You will only be able to mark one answer as the best one as that is how the forums work, pic one of the more informed responses no one will be mad at you for not picking the reply they gave.

 but its nice to know that you are happy with the advice given.