The Internet and its myriad of uses has taken over the mankind like a storm. I mean from shopping to connecting with people thousands of miles away to doing an online course, the Internet has conquered almost all the aspects of our life. Oh yes, it cannot give us daily workouts! Except for the workout to the fingers! Nevertheless, In this scenario every minute there is a website coming up. For these websites to be accessible to people via the World Wide Web, there are services. These services are like apartment or property owners who give a part of their house on lease or rent. These web hosting companies provide people who create websites a space on the server they lease for use by clients or they own themselves. But apart from that, you can host your website yourself too, as if you take the help of these web hosting services, it could be slightly heavier on your pocket.
How to Host Your own Website From Home
Well, hosting your own website might seem to be a bit tough initially. But actually it is not too tough either. Just that you need to be careful and should be willing to sacrifice your computer as once you decide to host a website, you will not be able to do anything on your computer, not even Internet access. Here is more.
Step 1 – All Clear
After you have taken a decision to host your own website, before starting off, check out your computer and make sure that you do not have anything important or useful remaining on your computer. This is because the computer’s data will have to be completely erased. Even if you take help of a web hosting service this factor might crop up.
Step 2 – Take your Pick
It is advisable not to use laptops for this purpose as they are supposed to be used for extended period of time. Moreover, in case you have a couple of desktops or so, you will have to choose either one and once you do that you will have to leave it running all the time. What kind of desktop you have and what processor it has won’t matter until it is a reasonably good machine.
Step 3 – Serve it Well
Be it hosting your own website on your local machine or for free, there is no escape from this procedure. What you have to do is install a web server application. Apache is apparently the best bet amongst the numerous options available. There will be things which will be asked while the web server application is set up. One of the most important of them is domain name and IP address of your DNS server. Leave the column as it is if you are not going to use a domain name.
Step 4 – Copy it
After the web server application is installed, what you will be required to do is to copy the contents of your website with images in the website files folder specified during server application installation. Now this will make the contents of this folder accessible to anyone on the Internet. This applies to both – hosting your own website on a mac, as well as hosting your website for free.
Step 5 – Routing the Server
Here at this stage, you are almost coming to an end of the process of hosting your own website. Here you will configure the forwarding of port 80. That is, from your router to the desktop where you have installed the software for web hosting. In case you are not using a router, forget about this. You can give user’s IP address in case you are not going to use a domain name. You may also like to read on how to register a domain name.
Finally, that number (IP address) will go in the browser, akin to a URL, leading your website to be brought up. Congratulations! You have accomplished the task of hosting your own website! Remember not to store personal files and the like in such a system and try using a proxy server to check the website, whether it is working. All the best!