The Hosting News) – So you have a blog. Cool, but let’s face it, that’s just not very unique in the modern-day web world. Everyone blogs; heck even your Xbox 360 has its own self-updating blog!
One way to set yourself apart from the hordes, and steer clear of restrictive hosting providers, is to use your own gear to run your own blog. You not only earn more geek street-cred, but self-hosting your blog opens the door to limitless configuration options—whether you’re using Notepad to edit bare-bones HTML documents, or setting up the latest WordPress plugins.
If you’ve never built your own server, or if you find the concept of an Apache installation terrifying, don’t sweat it. We’re going to help you shortcut the configuration headache, so you don’t have to emo-blog about it later.
For the backbone of your blog, hardware doesn’t really matter as much as you might think. You can run a web server on an old-school CPU and a craptastic videocard; you can run it on a dual-core rig with SLI graphics. As long as you aren’t planning to use your web server as a gaming rig, you can spend as much or as little on hardware as your bank account permits.
Regardless of the hardware you use, you need to be aware of a few important setup issues. Remember, you’re going to be running a web server; when it’s offline, so is your blog. So while you’ll want to have Windows automatically update and install the latest patches on your box, be sure to set an ideal time. And don’t forget the time-zone issue. If you’re running a blog on the west coast, arbitrarily setting your computer to update at 3 a.m. because it “seems late” could render your blog inaccessible to the east coasters who like a little Web 2.0 with their morning lattes.
It’s important to keep your virus scanner up and running on your web server, but you’re better off scheduling a daily, midnight drive scan, as opposed to kicking on the real-time protection. What you trade away in security, you gain by maximizing your system resources—this is crucial if you’re using a lower-end rig to power your blog, especially if you feel like multitasking the computer as a file dump or video streamer.
Before you really start tinkering with your machine, you’re going to want to establish a functioning, non-restricted connection between your server and the Internet. Typically, something’s blocking the path: a software firewall, a home router, or both.
While there are a number of software firewalls you can have on your machine, including the default Windows firewall, the port-opening procedure is similar for all. In Windows’ case, open the firewall control panel and click the Exceptions tab. Click “Add Port” and enter the following: HTTP (80), HTTPS (443), MYSQL (3306).
Now is a good time to get a static IP address for your machine. Without it, your router could reassign a different IP to your server, nullifying the entire point of port forwarding on the router. Click the Start button, then Run, and type in cmd. Hit Enter, which pulls up a command prompt in its own window. Type ipconfig /all, and look for the Local Area Connection section. Write down your IP address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, and all the IP addresses under “DNS servers.” Close the window and go to the Control Panel’s Network Connections menu. Right-click Local Area Connection and select Properties. Find the menu option for TCP/IP, select it, and click the Properties button.
You should now see a window that most likely has “Obtain an IP address automatically” selected. Click “Use the following…” for both sections, and begin entering the information you just wrote down. The only change should come in the IP address field, where you’ll want to pick an unlikely number far above your current IP—if the IP you wrote down is 192.168.0.1, for example, enter 192.168.0.250. Fire up your web browser to make sure you can still connect to the net, and you’re good to go
One way to set yourself apart from the hordes, and steer clear of restrictive hosting providers, is to use your own gear to run your own blog. You not only earn more geek street-cred, but self-hosting your blog opens the door to limitless configuration options—whether you’re using Notepad to edit bare-bones HTML documents, or setting up the latest WordPress plugins.
If you’ve never built your own server, or if you find the concept of an Apache installation terrifying, don’t sweat it. We’re going to help you shortcut the configuration headache, so you don’t have to emo-blog about it later.
For the backbone of your blog, hardware doesn’t really matter as much as you might think. You can run a web server on an old-school CPU and a craptastic videocard; you can run it on a dual-core rig with SLI graphics. As long as you aren’t planning to use your web server as a gaming rig, you can spend as much or as little on hardware as your bank account permits.
Regardless of the hardware you use, you need to be aware of a few important setup issues. Remember, you’re going to be running a web server; when it’s offline, so is your blog. So while you’ll want to have Windows automatically update and install the latest patches on your box, be sure to set an ideal time. And don’t forget the time-zone issue. If you’re running a blog on the west coast, arbitrarily setting your computer to update at 3 a.m. because it “seems late” could render your blog inaccessible to the east coasters who like a little Web 2.0 with their morning lattes.
It’s important to keep your virus scanner up and running on your web server, but you’re better off scheduling a daily, midnight drive scan, as opposed to kicking on the real-time protection. What you trade away in security, you gain by maximizing your system resources—this is crucial if you’re using a lower-end rig to power your blog, especially if you feel like multitasking the computer as a file dump or video streamer.
Before you really start tinkering with your machine, you’re going to want to establish a functioning, non-restricted connection between your server and the Internet. Typically, something’s blocking the path: a software firewall, a home router, or both.
While there are a number of software firewalls you can have on your machine, including the default Windows firewall, the port-opening procedure is similar for all. In Windows’ case, open the firewall control panel and click the Exceptions tab. Click “Add Port” and enter the following: HTTP (80), HTTPS (443), MYSQL (3306).
Now is a good time to get a static IP address for your machine. Without it, your router could reassign a different IP to your server, nullifying the entire point of port forwarding on the router. Click the Start button, then Run, and type in cmd. Hit Enter, which pulls up a command prompt in its own window. Type ipconfig /all, and look for the Local Area Connection section. Write down your IP address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, and all the IP addresses under “DNS servers.” Close the window and go to the Control Panel’s Network Connections menu. Right-click Local Area Connection and select Properties. Find the menu option for TCP/IP, select it, and click the Properties button.
You should now see a window that most likely has “Obtain an IP address automatically” selected. Click “Use the following…” for both sections, and begin entering the information you just wrote down. The only change should come in the IP address field, where you’ll want to pick an unlikely number far above your current IP—if the IP you wrote down is 192.168.0.1, for example, enter 192.168.0.250. Fire up your web browser to make sure you can still connect to the net, and you’re good to go
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