My Own Personal Web Server, How?

[LRoling]

Right now, I have my own wirless network setup with a Linksys router, G band. I just run my cable connection through it, and to my PC. I am setting up a small HP printer across my apartment with a wireless print server on it to connect to the network. My goal right now is to set up another box, connect it to the network, then be able to load .NET onto it, and develop sites on a test environment. I also want to load all my music onto that box, and be able to stream it from that box to my stereo system with the click of a button.

How can this be done?

First of all, what kind of specs should I think about when creating a server box?

The rest of the stuff I'm clueless about.

I know I'd need Windows Pro or Server? for the IIS setup, and .NET 2.0 Framework to load. I know how to load

PHP, Ruby, etc. I'm clueless as to how to smoothly set it up on the network, and then access it, etc.

Any links or help would be appreciated.

Edited December 12, 2006 by LRoling

[xxdesmus]

Think RAM for a server. The processor is second in terms of importance (for a home server at least).

As for streaming the music, I am not sure if there is an easier option, but my brother recently purchased an AirTunes Express for this same purpose and he swears by it. Simple to setup, and simple to use if you're already using iTunes. (you didn't really say)

You'll need to forward some ports through the router if you want external access to the sites you'll be creating.

You don't necessarily need Windows Server, Windows Pro has IIS 6 included. However, if you're feeling really adventurous you could try out Longhorn Server which includes IIS7 which is a huge leap ahead of IIS6 in terms of power, flexibility, and ease of use. Any installation of Longhorn Server would be a trial (obviously) that would expire mid/late 2007 though.

let me know what else you'd like to know more about.

Edited December 12, 2006 by xxdesmus

[dragon2611]

  xxdesmus said:

Think RAM for a server. The processor is second in terms of importance (for a home server at least).

As for streaming the music, I am not sure if there is an easier option, but my brother recently purchased an AirTunes Express for this same purpose and he swears by it. Simple to setup, and simple to use if you're already using iTunes. (you didn't really say)

You'll need to forward some ports through the router if you want external access to the sites you'll be creating.

You don't necessarily need Windows Server, Windows Pro has IIS 6 included. However, if you're feeling really adventurous you could try out Longhorn Server which includes IIS7 which is a huge leap ahead of IIS6 in terms of power, flexibility, and ease of use. Any installation of Longhorn Server would be a trial (obviously) that would expire mid/late 2007 though.

let me know what else you'd like to know more about.

if you run PHP on the server you can install jinzora which is a HTTP based media libary and will stream media to ANY media player that supports HTTP streaming and the file format that the source file is in.

Infact i beleve it can even be configured to transcode into a differnt format during streaming if required.

you can download it free from http://www.jinzora.com

[xxdesmus]

That looks like cool software (I may use that myself in fact), but how does he get that music playing on a stereo then? I am guessing the stereo is not hooked up to a PC, right?

[dragon2611]

  xxdesmus said:

That looks like cool software (I may use that myself in fact), but how does he get that music playing on a stereo then? I am guessing the stereo is not hooked up to a PC, right?

DOH! me and goldfish memory, i forgot he asked to stream it to a stereo.

Errm he'd have to have something that supported http streaming connected to the stereo to use that. I think the op will have to either connect a comptuer to the stereo or find one of those audio streaming devices (which probably need their own software)

Jinzora is pretty cool, i use it to stream music to my laptop over my wireless lan, saves filling up the laptop harddrive ;) , it runs off my mac mini quite happily.

[LRoling]

So, Jinzora runs a web site on the web server that displays my music selection. I can then stream it from my PC over the Internet to any PC connected to it? I also noticed on the site that it says I can stream it to stereo with a Jukebox feature as long as the stereo is connected to the PC.

[dragon2611]

  LRoling said:

So, Jinzora runs a web site on the web server that displays my music selection. I can then stream it from my PC over the Internet to any PC connected to it? I also noticed on the site that it says I can stream it to stereo with a Jukebox feature as long as the stereo is connected to the PC.

Jinzora will stream to anything that supports the File format used for the music (e.g mp3 wma.etc) and HTTP steaming.

If your planning to use it over the internet then make sure you setup user accounts with good passwords and probably an idea to use a different password to that than you use for other stuff, its probably quite secure but just playing it safe, wouldn't want RIAA or whoever their local counterpart is accusing you of distrubuting music now would we ;)

Mines setup to just allow access to anyone without logging in to it but that said mines Behind the router and shouldn't be accessable to the internet (that and the HTTP server (apache) on my mini is conifigured to only take requests from the 192.168.1.x range of Ips anyway so even if i did acidently expose it to the internet it would just spit out a 403 fobidden error) ;)

i'm guessing the audio jukebox would have to be connected to a pc so you can tell it what to play, i don't know how these jukebox things work, never seen one i considered to be a resonable enough price for me to actually buy it.

[Nicholas-c Veteran]

once u have your PC set up their is a set of web applications (apache etc) in a pack called "XAMPP" this should be a good easy way to do so

[xxdesmus]

^^ from the sounds of if he'll need to use IIS6/7 though because he wants to do .NET programming. Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought .NET on ties in with IIS (maybe Apache has a module for it).

[LRoling]

Yeah, it does. I'd definitely have to be on that platform, but I could load in PHP, Ruby on Rails as well since I learning to develop in those languages at the moment.