Setting up Simple Web Server

[roadgeek9]

My dad is planning on starting a website, but only wants to pay for ~100 MB of storage, but he knows he will need much more space. He asked me to turn one of the computers in the house into a web server. We have the following computers (from newest to oldest):

- His Laptop: Compaq Presario Z3000T, Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66 GHz, 1 GB DDR2 Memory, 80 GB Hard Disk, 8x DVD-RW, Windows Vista Business, 128 MB Intel GMA950

- My Laptop: HP Pavilion dv1000, Intel Pentium M 1.73 GHz, 1.5 GB DDR400 Memory, 80 GB Hard Disk, 8x DVD-RW, Windows XP Professional SP3 RC2, 128 MB Intel GMA900

- His Desktop: HP Vectra VL400, Intel Pentium III 1 GHz, 128 MB PC133 Memory, 20 GB Hard Disk, 32x CD-ROM, Windows 2000 Professional SP4, 16 MB Intel i810 Graphics

- My Desktop (planned web server): Compaq Deskpro EN, Intel Pentium III 550 MHz, 448 MB PC100 Memory, 40 GB Hard Disk, 16x DVD-ROM, 4x4x24x CD-RW, Windows XP Professional SP2, 64 MB nVidia GeForce 4 MX440

- My Mac: PowerMac G3 Blue and White, G3 400 MHz, 256 MB PC100 Memory, 10 GB Hard Disk, 16x DVD-RW, Mac OS X 10.3.9, 16 MB ATI Rage 128

As you can see, the planned server already has XP, but it runs slowly. We aren't looking towards much traffic, but we are going to upload a lot of data and point to a lot of data. What is the best distro to use to make this a web server, but keep the system as a workstation (I am looking towards running things like Firefox and OpenOffice Writer - not too much)?

[TurboTuna]

Hosting a connection form your house is always a bad idea. The speed will be slow. Its most likely against your ISP TOS too.

[stevember]

I would strongly suggest paying for hosting especially if the website is for business.

How fast is your broadband out?

Takes certain amount security issues away.

Hosting will probably be alot more reliable.

Cost running comp for 24hrs a day for few visits be higher than cost hosting. (Hosting better environment as servers on anyway)

To mention just small few reasons.

[roadgeek9]

Okay.

[Thread unofficially closed]

[Lant]

If you've got a laptop and a Mac, then format it and just put any distro's server edition on your pc, for example Ubuntu 7.10 and select the LAMP option when installing.

Although you really should just pay for the hosting.

[+dave164 Subscriber¹]

If its just to show your friends stuf then having something like LAMP, WAMP or XAMPP running is fine, but if its for a propper website then forget about it!

David

[stevember]

Okay.

[Thread unofficially closed]

But to setup one to learn and experiment different story.

[roadgeek9]

Well, he's trying to set up his own consulting business.

[kyro]

if you search for it, there are even some decent webhosting solutions who would let you host for free ,maybe the allowed space and bandwidth will be very small but later you can buy a hosting package and transfer your site easily.

[MasterC]

Nearly Free Speech offers pretty cheap hosting starting at $0.25. (Y)