DIY Hosting

[Fish Food]

halo,

I have just started my own ltd company and am about to set up my own website to market my CV and online software products I wish to sell.

I have been toying with the idea of buying a DELL PC and installing .NET 2.0, DOTNETNUKE, SQL Server, SSL etc, the PC costs £339 for a dedicated server and continue to use my laptop as a development enviroment.

Should I pay for a web hosting company around £20-50 pm or do it myslef.?

Cheers

[DimPrawn]

I host several low traffic sites on an old AMD PC with 1GB RAM using NTL cable.

Works okay and of course you have total control over the hosting.

So yes, for this sort of thing (online CV, borchures etc) hosting it yourself saves quite a bit of cash.

[NoddY]

I host several low traffic sites on an old AMD PC with 1GB RAM using NTL cable.

Works okay and of course you have total control over the hosting.

So yes, for this sort of thing (online CV, borchures etc) hosting it yourself saves quite a bit of cash.

Does this mean you are using co-location or hosting it from your broadband connection?

As for Fish, might you consider a virtual server where you have root access etc., but share the same physical server? And you ought to consider any babysitting that's involved in a server you have reposibility for e.g. patching, log analysis, intrusion detection, daemons that mysteriously stop etc. ?

[DimPrawn]

I host about 5 sites from a PC at home using my broadband connection. Small UPS and a D-link router/firewall complete the hardware.

Traffic is fairly low (about 200 visitors per day, 20MB bandwidth).

For anything serious (business critical), large bandwidth or where security is important, you must really pay for a proper dedicated hosting solution.

[Fish Food]

tank you.

Hi Y All,

many thanks for your feedback.

[NoddY]

I host about 5 sites from a PC at home using my broadband connection. Small UPS and a D-link router/firewall complete the hardware.

Traffic is fairly low (about 200 visitors per day, 20MB bandwidth).

For anything serious (business critical), large bandwidth or where security is important, you must really pay for a proper dedicated hosting solution.

Name resolution: Can I ask if you have a fixed IP for this and how much your ISP charges for this - or else are you using a dynamic DNS service to map your domains to your changing IP?

[DimPrawn]

I have a so called dynamic IP, but it hasn't changed in over a year.

I then map my domain to this IP with control panel on the registration company (UKReg).

[Fish Food]

my ip changes with each new connection, i am with virgin, currently using no-ip to update my dns, has anyone had any problems with no-ip?

I am looking at signing up with freenetnames, they provide a static ip and upto 8m bandwidth for £9.99 (3 or 6) months then £15.99

[n3il123]

Fish is there any chance you could pm me the details of this provider as I can't seem to find them cheers

[Durbs]

No, under no circumstances host sites yourself using an ADSL connection it is a bad idea, i've tried it myself and quickly found myself turning to a leased server for the following reasons:

- Watch what hapens to your website when your missus unplugs your 'web server' to plug the hoover in
- Your residential power supply is not reliable enough to keep a 365/24/7 site up and running
- Your ADSL line will not provide service 24/7, connections from web users will get dropped all the time
- Watch the 3 points above get your site dropped like hot coals by the search engines when they see it down a couple of times or detect the slow connection to your sites
- Look up what the 'A' in ADSL stands for to see why its not designed for web hosting (customers are coming in from the wrong way)
- Leased servers are really cost effective these days, i lease several servers now and only pay $79/month per server (http://www.crystaltech.com/dedicated...dedicated.aspx) This includes huge bandwidth and 99.9% uptime

Basically i just found that doing it the home adsl route meant that people were seeing intermittent timeouts or 404's even though i had what appeared from my end to be a reliable adsl line and a few instances of going away for the weekend only to find the house breaker had tripped whilst i was away leaving all the sites down meant that a leased server was a necessity rather than a luxury.

If you are serious about your site go dedicated, if not, by all means try the adsl route, it'll work fine as a hobby site platform, but in the long run and if its part of your livelihood then a dedicated server is the way to go.

If you only have a couple of sites though, why not go for a shared solution which is a fraction of the cost and packages are available that include all the services you have mentioned?

Durbs