Do It Yourself Hosting? Is it OK?

[Jose]

I am wondering if self-hosting is the answer to current space limitations where my sites are currently hosted. All I have is DSL. Does anyone recommend running a server out of one's house? Of course I would have all the necessary equipment and software. What do you think? And I don't want to spend hundreds on places like Rackspace, as an alternative to self-hosting. It doesn't make sense to spend so much.

[petertdavis]

I wouldn't do it. I thought about it, then realized that it's a lot easier and cheaper to outsource. Now that I have my own hosting company, it's even more important to have a stable environment to run my servers, not to mention my own sites I have hosted. If you're just doing fun stuff, not serious business related stuff, go ahead and play with a server at home. If you're running a serious site, get yourself a dedicated server, or bigger hosting account.

[Jose]

Thanks,
I believe you are right. I will still set up a small "intranet" at home just to learn from it. Again,
thanks for the adivce.

[net-trend]

If the site you are hosting isn't mission critical, I really don't see why not.

But that also depends on how popular your site is, if it is not that popular or fairly popular, using your DSL line should be sufficient. But of course expect slowdowns during network peak times.

Otherwise, get a REAL web host, if you have a very popular site.

[Matt Mickiewicz]

Be sure to check with your ISP... Most high speed internet service providers prohibit you from running a web server.

[tbag]

Its fine aslong as you can support the bandwidth, space etc..
But yes check with your ISP

[M. Johansson]

If you REALLY know what you are doing, you might be able to pull it off, but you'd still be at the mercy of DoS attacks from script kiddies with such a small pipe.

[lightnin]

Hosting a site yourself is fine and not so difficult, really. You can install a webserver on your computer and run your site from it. However, many ISP's block port 80, so that's a problem you could run into. Also, if your site gets any kind of traffic, it'll prove to be difficult.

[hillsy]

I did this for about a year. Wouldn't recommend it for a "production" site - i.e. one you want to be up all the time, make money off etc. However for a personal site or two it's an invaluable learning experience and there's nothing quite like having total control of your server

[tbag]

Damn straight hillsy you can maintain and do whatever you want with it that is if your ISP lets you

[hillsy]

Yes... should mention that I had an account set up with a fixed IP i.e. I was allowed to run a server on it.

[DPC]

If you don't need your site to be available 24/7, the freedom it allows you is great. If you run a business site, why not pay $10 a month to know it will be looked after?

[antibob]

Yeah, do it.
I will never go back to isp hosting. May be a nice segue to co-locating too.

[echoweb]

Personally, I don't think that all of the time and effort you would invest into setting up something like this, would be worth it. If for $8-10/mo, you can actually get a decent web host, then why create all of the extra headaches?

Best Regards,
Boris

[Kaumil Patel]

There is too much time being taken to run a proper and effecient server when trying to do it on your own. You'll end up spending more time with that then focusing on the web page itself.

Also, I don't believe that ISP's that provide DSL/Cable allow any type of servers to be run.

[tbag]

Its just a puzzle weather or not the pieces fit together if you get my drift

And if they dont im sure many others can get your puzzle problem fixed

[Prince]

I was looking into it, and it's not worth the cost.

You can do it with a SDSL line though.

It would be cheaper to get a dedicated server.

[jpease]

Everyone is talking about the expense of doing it yourself.

I have a webserver of sorts setup on my Cable connection (don't tell my ISP).

The total cost was $40. I bought an old P166 on ebay for $40 ($25 of it was for shipping!). Installed freeSCO (www.freescosoft.org) on it to share my internet - then installed the Apache, PHP, MySQL, Exim and Teapop add-on packages(Free). Using DynamicDNS (dyndns.org) the server can even update my DNS when my dynamic IP changes(Free). Works great as a little test server, and the cost was certainly not prohibitive.

Of course, as has been said - I would not use it in a production environment as it is not very secure (as I have it setup), or fast, nor do I have any UPS system in case of power outage.

But hey for a couple bucks it is worth the experience.

[M. Johansson]

Originally posted by jpease
Everyone is talking about the expense of doing it yourself.

I have a webserver of sorts setup on my Cable connection (don't tell my ISP).

The total cost was $40. I bought an old P166 on ebay for $40 ($25 of it was for shipping!). Installed freeSCO (www.freescosoft.org) on it to share my internet - then installed the Apache, PHP, MySQL, Exim and Teapop add-on packages(Free). Using DynamicDNS (dyndns.org) the server can even update my DNS when my dynamic IP changes(Free). Works great as a little test server, and the cost was certainly not prohibitive.

Of course, as has been said - I would not use it in a production environment as it is not very secure (as I have it setup), or fast, nor do I have any UPS system in case of power outage.

But hey for a couple bucks it is worth the experience.

I was more referring to time of maintaining and learning, rather than cost of actual hardware. In a non-production environment, I think do-it-yourself hosting is perfectly fine.