Hi all, I thought I would write a tutorial on how to host a website from home, thus eliminating the costs of domain name and hosting fees. This is from my experience, so please feel free to add any comments/ideas to improve apon this tutorial.
As we know, the amount of web sites and pages grow on the web at considerable speeds. Every one wants a site/page, and so they should! the web is an easy way to get ones points,ideas and anything that one would like to share with the world out in the open. The costs of doing such an expression of ones self can, at times going through the wrong channels, be very expensive. There is the yearly cost of a domain name, hosting server and page development. Hopefully this tutorial will chang all that. My goal is to let others know of a different option.
Hosting from home.
When hosting from home, the costs are kept to a fraction of what they would be otherwise. With the help of Joomla!, this has become easy and relitivly enexpensive. All one needs is a good internet connection, wether that be 2 - 8 mb broadband or a T1-T3 connection (the faster the mb a second, the better performance the site will have). Alot of people believe that an expensive server is needed to run a webserver, this is not accurate. For hosting at home, usually the best servers are the old computers that you upgraded form because the were so slow. If you haven't gotten rid of that dinosuar, then your in luck. It still has a use! Not just as a webserver, but an extra firewall as well.
Ok, well enough rambling about the uses of old comps and on to the tutorial right? Right!
What will be needed is:
server software (apache, wamp5, ect.) I use wamp5 for now and can be downloaded here http://www.en.wampserver.com/
your old computer, or one picked up for a reasonable price
latest stable Joomla! or Mambo cms
An account with Dydns http://www.dyndns.com/ (It's free to create an account and is used for redirecting requests from the net to your ip address. You can set up a free domain name like 'yoursite.gotdns.com' and save on the domain name fees.)
operating system (from my experience windows xp series, although one can go with the option of instlling server os or linux. For now we'll use the easy way with xp and wamp5)
A good internet connection (unfortunantly those with dial up will not be able to host from home due to the nature that the webserver must run constantly or your site will be down, and the connection speed 56k is not sufficent for the workload a site requires.)
mailserver software (for the time being this is needed to connect to an smtp mailserver. Not always though, when you have a mailserver on your computer you are bypassing the isp mailserver and will normally be sending straight from your computer to the smtp server to whom you are sending the mail to) I would suggest Postcast server pro for this. It is easy to use and can be configured to only send and not recieve mails. the added security fuction of this program will also limit access to the mailserver so as to keep unwanted mail spamers from turning your server to a spam airport. You can find Postcast here. http://www.postcastserver.com/
(I am currently looking for a way to use the phpmailer and or smtp mailer in php to do this with out the need for an additional mail server. I will post my findings when I have them)
Ok, now to the installation.
With xp on our old machine, install wamp5 and follow the directions. When it asks what is to be the root directory, just click on next (the defalt www root is the best config to use).
You will then be prompted to locate your browsers .exe (this is generally in the programs folder under local disk. the path would be C:\program files\"your browser". I would suggest using firefox as your main browser, explorer is not very good at handling webpages. got to firefox.com to download this if you do not already have it. The pathway for the firefox .exe should be C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox.)
After selecting your browsers .exe click on next to finish the config setup.
Ok, now you have the webserver installed on you computer.
Next would be the Joomla!/mambo installation to the server.
if you did not opt the server to start after the installation was complete, then go to your start menue and look for the wamp server folder in all programs. start it up and we're ready to go!
Unzip the joomla/mambo stable release (if you use winRAR, right click on the release and click on extract files. A window will pop up asking where to extract to. click on local disk, your C: disk, and then on the wamp folder. In the wamp folder you will see your www folder. Click on it and click ok. Click on yes to overwrite all. Now the files are extracted to the www folder.) and place the files in your www folder. To get to the www folder click on the icon for the wampserver in the taskbar at the right and select www directory. Click on yes to overwrite all. Now your files are set.
In the taskbar to the right, click on the wamp5 server icon and select the localhost option. Your browser will now popup with the joomla/mambo install screen. Don't install just yet though, we need to still set up the database and user/s in phpmyadmin.
In your firefox browser go to file and select new tab. Make shure you have the new tab selected by clicking on the tab when it shows up in the browser. Now go back to the taskbar icon of wamp5, click on it and selact phpmyadmin.
This part is relativly easy.... Although spelling is not!
In the Create new database section at the top enter the name of the data base you want to create and click create. You will be given a window that says database created. at the top you will see Server: localhost, click on that to return to the original page you started from. Now click on Privileges and you will get the user window. Click on add a new user to do what it says.
*Now this is important, Follow the exact instructions*
Enter your user name
under host select localhost
enter a password
retype password
next to Global privileges, select check all then go to the button go at the bottom right of the screen and click it.
Ok, with me so for?
Go to your tab with the joomla/mambo installation page on it and follow the instructions. When you get to the page asking for input, the top line will be Localhost, Then your user name (exactly how you entered it on the phpmyadmin page), your user password (same as the phpmyadminpage) and then the name you have chosen for your data base. Click on next to get the window for the name of your site. Enter it into the box then click on next. This window shows you your configuration. enter your email address and CHANGE THE ADMIN PASSWORD! Change the password to something you'll remember. click on next and your almost done. When it talks about the installation folder go to your www directory and change the name of the installation folder to just that, Installation folder. (we have done this instead of deleting it because if something ever went wrong, we could use the installation folder again to repair it). Go back to your browser window talking about the installation folder and click on view my site.
TA DA!
you have a working site now! Yeah!
Go to part 2
