Host Your Own Website On Your Own PC

Here are the steps to follow to set up a website hosted entirely on your own Windows PC. First I'll present the general steps, then I'll break down the details for you:

1. Make sure you have cable modem, DSL or another high-speed connection. A dialup telephone modem is NOT good enough.

2. Get a DNS hostname for your home Internet connection.

3. Get a static local IP address for your computer within your home network.

4. Configure your router to correctly forward connections on port 80 (the HTTP port) to your web server. Even if you think you don't have a router, you probably do— many popular cable and DSL modems include wifi or wired Ethernet jacks for multiple computers, which means they contain a built-in router. If your ISP blocks port 80, choose an alternative port number and forward that (or get a better ISP that welcomes websites at home, like Speakeasy.Net).

5. Configure Windows Firewall to allow your web server to communicate on port 80.

6. Get Apache, a free, high-quality web server program. If you have Windows XP Professional, you also have the option of Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), which comes standard with Windows XP Professional. But that option only allows you to host one site. I recommend Apache.

7. Test your web server from your own computer.

8. Replace the default home page with your own web page. Now the site is your own!

9. Test your web server from a computer that is NOT on your home network to make sure you followed all of the steps correctly.

Upload speed, not download speed, is the most important feature for hosting websites at home.

The main limitation will be your upload speed (uplink speed). Most DSL or cable modem connections have an upload speed between 128kbps (128,000 bits per second) and 384kbps (384,000 bits per second).

So how long does it take to load your home page? Add up the size of your home page (in bytes), the sizes of all of the images on that page, and the size of any Flash movies (.swf files) or CSS style sheets (.css files) referenced by that page. Now multiply by 8 and you'll know how many bits make up your home page. Divide that by your upload speed and you'll have a rough idea how long it takes to load your home page under ideal conditions. There will also be latency delays slowing things down, and multiple users will of course slow things down and make it take longer. There is no fixed limit on the number of users who can access your home-based website at the same time - things just slow down.

Step Seven: Test Your Website From Your Own Computer

Is the website working? Let's find out! The first test is to access your site from your own computer. On the same computer that is running the web server software, access the URL http://localhost/. You should see an example home page provided with your Apache or IIS web server software. If not, review the appropriate quick start guide above and figure out which step you skipped! If you received errors during installation, you need to resolve them before your website will work.

Step Eight: Make Your Own Home Page

You have a web server, but right now the "content" on the site is just the default home page that came with the server software. Time to fix that!

All you have to do is move your own web pages to the appropriate folder. If you followed the Apache quick-start guide, your web pages belong in this folder:

C:Program FilesApache Grouphtdocs

If you followed the IIS quick-start guide, your web pages belong here:

C:Inetpubwwwroot

First, remove the files that are already in those folders. It's not smart to leave "default" files lying around. What if a security problem was found with one of these common files? Then your website would be vulnerable.

Next, copy your own web pages and images into the folder. The "home page" of your site should be called index.html (not index.htm). Both Apache and IIS are smart enough to know that when a user visits http://yourname.is-a-geek.com/, they should act as if the user asked for http://yourname.is-a-geek.com/index.html and do the right thing.

Step Nine: Test Your Website From The Outside World

We did a lot of work here to give our computer a hostname on the Internet and forward web traffic through the router and firewall. Did we do it right? Only one way to be sure! Access your website from a computer that is not on your home Internet connection, or have a friend try it. For example, if you registered the name myname.is-a-geek.com with DynDNS, your website's address is http://myname.is-a-geek.com/. Try that address from a computer outside your home and see what happens!
If it works... great! If not, you probably made a mistake in dynamic DNS, port forwarding, firewall configuration or local static IP configuration.