Simple sites may need nothing more than storage space to hold the volume of html files and images required to make a clean, crisp and functional website. More advanced sites may require databases, or the ability to run programming code or scripting, which give the benefits of allowing you or a good web developer to build more advanced and dynamic websites, as well as to take advantage of free software available to add major site enhancements like forum, blogging, or shopping software.

You can talk to your ISP about web space hosting, and expect to spend somewhere between $10 and $50 a month depending on features and storage space allowances. This will not only give you a place to call your own, but instead of using your ISP's domain name, like www.yourISP.com/~username, you can have something that has a nicer ring to it, like www.mycompanyname.com or www.myfamilyname.net. In either case, the names can sound more professional depending on the domain name you choose. The features you choose will depend on the complexity of the site you want to build. Is it going to be simple HTML, tied to a development environment like Frontpage or Cold Fusion, or carry a database of customer, product or other information behind the scenes? Most ISPs will include a few basics, but may offer a small fee for database access or Frontpage extensions - let them know what you need, and you may be able to save a few dollars by not paying for features that you won't actually use.

Taking it to the next step, many small businesses are now able to afford hosting their site in a professional data center - these are environmentally controlled buildings with protected power and controlled physical access to cabinets, cages or shelves of PCs. For a few hundred dollars a month (more or less), you can build your PC, bring it to them, and then be live on the ‘net with your web server and have the comfort of knowing that you need to worry only about your computer, since someone else, the ISP, is going to take care of everything else. There is a loose classification of datacenters, with Class A facilities the highest level, with redundant air conditioner units, large UPS units with generator backups, redundant network core architecture, and on-staff security manning the premises, leaving Class C facilities several grades down with lower prices and fewer redundancies. The price tends to go with the classification; however, you do get what you pay for. Visit a few before signing on the dotted line, since even a cheap $99 a month isn't worth seeing a water pipe dripping on the floor next to where you have to put your computer.

The next question that comes to the experienced and brave is: is it worth hosting with an ISP instead of hosting it myself? It is an interesting question, when considering the availability of low-cost computers, small battery UPSs (Uninterruptable Power Supplies), and the availability of unlimited bandwidth broadband connections to homes. The reliability of electrical and telephonic infrastructures has grown so much that many users can literally host a site in their basement with a few simple ingredients, without letting any of the web browsers knowing. The cost savings per month may or may not balance out the risk of doing things yourself, however, there is a large community of "do-it-yourselfers" out there who host within their homes and do it successfully.

What are the basic steps? Take your home network, tell your router to forward all incoming port 80 (which is web browsing) traffic to a specified internal IP address, then build a computer and give it that IP address. All that's left is adding on web server software, adding in any other features you need, uploading your web content, and telling the world that your website domain has a new IP address. The trick here is the difference between dynamic and static IP addressing. When you connect to the Internet, your ISP will assign an IP to you - if it's dynamic, that IP will be assigned to you from a large pool IP addresses, and you will have no way of knowing what IP you will be given prior to connecting - not very practical if you want to host a web site, though. Having a static IP means that, for a nominal extra fee, each time you connect, your ISP assigns the same address to you each time you connect - you'll always have the same IP address, thus as long as you stay connected, your mini-web server can stay online. Your domain, specifically your www hostname (www.mycompanyname.com or www.myfamilyname.net) will be configured with your Internet connection's static IP address, which will point web users to your router. Your router will then act as a police office and redirect web traffic inside your network to your web server, which will then feed your website content out over the Internet.

Some important considerations as you may want to add on a few things for safety and security, including a small UPS, which can run you around $100 or less, to power your router, modem and web server in case of a brief power failure, or a few spare parts for your computer in case it breaks. Definitely enable firewalling rules on your router - only point over the ports that you know you will be using:

Port	Service	Likely use
21	FTP	The best way to send files, but will you be sending files home from the outside?
22	SSH	A smart idea to leave open so you can connect to your home computer from the outside world - close it if you don't intend on using it
25	Mail	Unlikely, but possible that advanced users could use this port to send mail
80	WWW	Very likely - web traffic by default uses this port to send data
110	POP3 mail	It is unlikely that anyone but an expert will need this open

As to the operating system itself, the Windows and Linux camps are fairly heavily entrenched in their positions that their OS is the best, and that the other is inefficient. Generally speaking, Windows systems are easier to install and maintain, but have more expensive software options and questionable uptime reliability, and Linux systems are more difficult to build and configure, but have free open-source software applications for most purposes and can stay online for years at a time. Macs have brought respectability in the geek community as Apple merges a Unix base to it's graphical operating system, but the community using those systems as web servers is smaller, leaving a smaller group of people to ask questions of when things break. In either case, you can control what programs are installed to support your website, and you can tailor the entire server for the purpose you want - without having to beg and plead an ISPs technical support group to install the one thing missing for your project.

copyright © 2007 home computer tips