setting up your own web server

It’s really easier than you think.

Why would you want to set up your own web server? Well, if you like to share photos/music/etc. and NOT pay for hosting, then you should set up your own web server.

What you need:

• an old computer that meets fedora’s min specs
• a hi-speed internet connection
• a dyndns client
• some time

Follow these instructions on installing and configuring fedora core 6. By the time that is done, you should have linux installed and have apache and mysql running. To test this, go to another computer on your network and type the IP address of your linux box into the address bar on your browser. If you get a Fedora test page, all is well. If you didn’t, then something is wrong.

If everything went well, then make a file called ‘index.html’ with the following content:

Testing my installation

Now put this in /var/www/html/

Again, from another computer, open a browser and type in the address of the linux box. If you see your ‘Testing my installation’ message, all is well. You can continue to add documents to the /var/www/html that you want public facing.

Now, the next step is to forward the http port on your router (port 80). Go to portforward.com and look up the instructions for the specific make and model for your router. You want to forward traffic on port 80 to your linux box.

The last step is to set up a dyndns client on your linux box ( or on another machine on your network). What dyndns does is every time your external ISP IP address changes, it updates a name server to point traffic from a domain to the new IP address. For example, I use a cable internet connection. When my home IP address changes, my dyndns client updates the record for jsnby.is-a-geek.com on the name server that is used when you try to resolve the domain name for a particular IP.

Clear as mud? I hope not. Have fun.