About this Web Server Tutorial

My customer wanted to create her own home web server from “scratch” with no knowledge of servers. So I wrote this article for her and you. I hope it works for you.

With this setup you’ll be able to host all of your websites (any configuration) on your own home computer. You will never have to pay for bandwidth overages, no monthly hosting charges, never worry about being shut down, and never have to rely on other people’s web server.

Introduction

Basic terminologies in this tutorial:

You don’t necessarily need to know these terms to have a web server up and running. So, I won’t go into detail for each term, because the details are not necessary for this tutorial. Also, with respect to definitions; these terms are referenced for the purpose of this tutorial. If you already know these definitions, than obviously you can go to the tutorial sections.

• Server - A server is any computer, assigned to serve task(s). So essentially we’ll be converting your home computer into a server with the task of serving up pages to other computers; a web server.
• Web Server - We’ll be setting up your web server on an Open Source software called Apache, which is the most used web server software in the world. You can learn more about Apache here, http://www.apache.org/
• Open Source - For the sake of saving time, I won’t go in to detail here. In a nutshell this means, free. We’ll be installing your entire home server on proven open source fortune 500 secure infrastructure software, for free. We can thank the open source community, for this setup and the unquantifiable contribution they have made to the future of technology. If it wasn’t for them the internet, would NOT be what it is today! You can learn more about open source here, http://www.opensource.org/
• Ubuntu Server - Based on Debian, is an Open Source distribution of a Linux operating system, in contrast to proprietary commercial software, MS Windows Server, Longhorn. There are many kinds of popular distributions (referred to as distros), like SUSE, Mandriva, Red Hat, and many more. You can learn more about other distros here, http://distrowatch.com/ and you learn more about Ubuntu here, http://www.ubuntu.com/.
• Static IP -This is a Permanent IP Address that doesn’t change. It usually comes with a business internet account from your ISP. The most common and reliable setup to configure your web server.
• Dynamic IP - A dynamic IP Address does change, hence dynamic. Most home internet services have this connection by default. But, you can use free services such as http://www.no-ip.com, https://www.dyndns.com, or http://www.dnsexit.com, to get around this.

Prerequisite:

Depending on your budget, you can set this up with one computer (mail server, web server, name server, any configuration). And for more technical applications and depth of your enterprise, I would recommend at least 2 computers. But, for this tutorial we are going to go low budget and set up a web server on a typical home computer.

Ingredients for this tutorial:

One home computer with at least 512mb ram, processor of at least Pentium 3, and a CD-Rom.

One DSL or Cable internet connection w/ a static IP address.

Two hours of your time.

We will be doing a clean install, by formatting (erasing) the hard drive on your new system. Ultimately your system will run headless, on a pretty gui, and secure ssh connection. In layman’s terms, after installing you will not be needing a keyboard, mouse, or unneeded peripherals attached to the computer- headless. Instead you will be accessing your new server via your Windows laptop or home computer locally or from any where in the world -ssh connection. All with an easy to to understand graphical user interface- pretty gui.

Continue to next page….Get a Domain Name

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