How to host your website at home?

[LaRue Medlin]

Just a thought. I have a couple older pc's just laying around. Wanted to try it and see if I could. I'm paying for 6 domains. Gets expensive. Anyone know how or are doing this themselves.....

 

[Jacob Dryer]

I've leasted a server, that I resell personal/buisness hosting from, you definatly can host from home. But I found it to be more hastle than it was worth. A lot of ISP block port 80, so you would have to get around that.

 

[Matt DeFina]

here's a high level overview:

if your internet connection doesn't use a static IP for your connection, then you'll need to upgrade to static, then point one of your domains to that IP. then you may want a router to act as your firewall, only allowing port 80 to pass through to your "server" computer. Your server will need IIS installed assuming you are using windows OS, and then add a html on your default.asp page in the inetpub folder.

 

[Richard L]

LaRue,

Why do you need 6 websites hosted?? One should be enough for everthing you need.



I don't recommend hosting your own web server since it involves a lot more than just installing IIS. There are too many threats out there that can take down your site and the software to stop them will get very expensive. You will eventually become a slave to the server and will constantly be having to do maintenance on it.



You should be able to get someone to host a single website with all the security in place for $15 a month or less. That's probably a whole lot less than you will end up paying for the Static IP address and that is just the tip of the iceberg.



...Rich

 

[Matt DeFina]

i agree with Richard, it's much easier to use a 3rd party host.

i ran my own server for quite a while, for family and friends, and it really became a PITA to maintain sites/services for others.



-Matt

 

[Jeffrey Travis]

Even w/six domains he could still have one hosting service (usually for less than $100) and just use sub sites and point the domains to those sites/folders.



I am not sure if they will allow 6 but I have friends that have set it up for 2.



Domains are usually only about $10 per year and sometimes the first one is free if you host w/them.



JT#14

 

[LaRue Medlin]

I have 5 sites set up as subdomains and everything works well,,, but the problem is that google won't crawl my subdomains. At least they haven't in the past 18 months. I can google locksmith , locksmith sumter, sumter locksmith.... and only Carolina LK will come up.



I have acarolinalocksmith.com, carolinalocksmith.net, carolinalocksmithsc.com, locksmithsumter.com, sumterlocksmith.com.......

 

[Richard L]

LaRue,

Check the web for tips on getting your website on Google. There are a number of people who have inexpensive tips, booklets and software to build Metadata tag Keywords in your source HTML file that search engines use to search your website. That way you only need one website, and the Metadata tag Keywords will link to your site if one of the keywords is used in a search. The more keywords that match the search, the more hits you will get, and the the higher up on the list your website will appear in the search results.



Check out the link below to learn what Metadata tags can do:





...Rich