Web hosting service from home?

**Adam Gabriel** · 10-27-2011, 05:19 PM

Can someone tell me how to start a web hosting service from home?

**MustangV10** · 10-28-2011, 05:36 AM

Are you wanting to host servers from your house?

**MyDigitalpoint** · 10-28-2011, 07:31 PM

Servers or simply websites?

You can install a Windows-based distro to run a home server. I recommend you XAMPP from Apache Friends, www.apachefriends.org

But be aware that the latest version might not run properly so you should better try and older release heading for stability.

Now think of this; to run a hosting service from home you need to have your computer on night and day, can you afford it? Over time it will wear out so you should need to buy a home server instead.

Besides electricity consumption, you need a static IP or assign your actual dynamic IP on a daily basis to the domain you are going to use to setup your hosting.

And of course, you need to install on your localhost a hosting application and control panel such as Kloxo, Usermin or Zpanel.

However I'm not sure if you want to run a server or a host others' websites.

**MustangV10** · 10-29-2011, 04:57 AM

Originally Posted by MyDigitalpoint

Servers or simply websites?

You can install a Windows-based distro to run a home server. I recommend you XAMPP from Apache Friends, www.apachefriends.org

But be aware that the latest version might not run properly so you should better try and older release heading for stability.

Now think of this; to run a hosting service from home you need to have your computer on night and day, can you afford it? Over time it will wear out so you should need to buy a home server instead.

Besides electricity consumption, you need a static IP or assign your actual dynamic IP on a daily basis to the domain you are going to use to setup your hosting.

And of course, you need to install on your localhost a hosting application and control panel such as Kloxo, Usermin or Zpanel.

However I'm not sure if you want to run a server or a host others' websites.

You make a technical and intelligent response to everything. :P

**Don Quixote** · 10-29-2011, 11:21 AM

Why would you want to do that? The only scenario which I can see which can use a home server is a network for a group of friends to play games together. That way everybody knows when the server will be online. If the home server is supposed to go public, all kinds of problems will crop up. Top of the list would be dissatisfied users when the home server goes off-line.

**NeilPearson** · 10-29-2011, 07:13 PM

Yeah setting up a home server doesn't sound like a good idea. What if the power goes out. What if the server crashes and you aren't there to watch it... are you willing to deal with denial of service attacks or hackers trying to get in? Are you going to upgrade security patches to the server in a timely manner? When patching, do you have a secondary server that will still be running so there is no downtime? What if you get successful and need to add servers into a cluster and do load balancing? Are you going to do all that?

A hosting company deals with all of this and more. I wouldn't even attempt to do it on my own when there are plenty of serving companies out there

**Jerlene** · 10-30-2011, 01:18 AM

If you want to just sell hosting without the knowledge or resources you can just buy some reseller hosting. This means you can sell hosting accounts for another company and not have to deal with support or any of that stuff. You're pretty much just an affiliate.

**MustangV10** · 10-30-2011, 10:57 AM

Originally Posted by NeilPearson

Yeah setting up a home server doesn't sound like a good idea. What if the power goes out. What if the server crashes and you aren't there to watch it... are you willing to deal with denial of service attacks or hackers trying to get in? Are you going to upgrade security patches to the server in a timely manner? When patching, do you have a secondary server that will still be running so there is no downtime? What if you get successful and need to add servers into a cluster and do load balancing? Are you going to do all that?

A hosting company deals with all of this and more. I wouldn't even attempt to do it on my own when there are plenty of serving companies out there

If you own an unmanaged dedicated server in a DC somewhere you still have problems though. If a DDoS attacks happens, your provider won't deal with it, it'd be your server so your responsibility to deal with it.

**Don Quixote** · 10-30-2011, 04:27 PM

I think most data center do have some kind of defense set up to mitigate DDOS attacks. When your server is targeted, you are not the only one affected. Everybody on the same connection will be affected. Even if you have a dedicated connection, traffic to your server has to pass through a backbone somewhere.

**MustangV10** · 10-31-2011, 03:52 AM

Originally Posted by Don Quixote

I think most data center do have some kind of defense set up to mitigate DDOS attacks. When your server is targeted, you are not the only one affected. Everybody on the same connection will be affected. Even if you have a dedicated connection, traffic to your server has to pass through a backbone somewhere.

That's true, never thought of it like that.