What is involved in hosting my own sites. I have a multiprocessor computer that would probably do the trick for my small sites. What kind of software would I need?
What are the security issues?
Can I do this from my home cable connection?

Your help will be much appreciated. Thanks.

I'm happy with my current company who is doing my hosting, I'm just getting more people wanting me to build and host sites for them. It would be more cost effective to host my own in the future.

I think one of the simplest solutions would be to use FoxServ which can be found at sourceforge.net

Technically, if you are running Linux, you would have Apache, Exim/Sendmail, Proftpd or PureFTP and BIND which would provide the essential parts to running your web server. As for security, you would have to do all those IPtables and firewall.

if you are doing it on a PC, you would probably need Windows NT4 or 2000 Server which would have IIS installed for your web server.

As to whether you can do it over your home cable connection, technically Yes. Legally, it depends if your ISP permits you to do so as most will not. Practically, no, it is too slow for real web hosting. A Cable network is one which is shared bandwidth with your neighbourhood and most would capped the outgoing traffic which would be essential for web hosting. Maybe 1 low traffic personal site would probably survive the cable network.

If you want to do web hosting, it is easier and cheaper to get a Dedicated Server at one of the datacenter. Not only would it be cheaper, faster, you will get 24/7 tech support where you have technicians on call to reboot your server or replace components if they go faulty.

But before you do anything, get a good linux or web administration book and practise on a local machine.


As for security issues, as long as you are on the internet, you are opening yourself to the bulk of the security risks. You can secure your server but like any security system, they need constant monitoring and upgrading to withstand any infiltration.

In the short, medium and long run, it is cheaper to host your server in a datacenter.

not sure, what a datacenter is...could you enlighten me?

A Datacenter is a place where they host hundreds or thousands dedicated servers. They would have a pool of technicians monitoring these servers. They would come with direct connections to the internet.

Some datacenters that I know include Rackshack, Nocster and FDCServers.

Like your web site is hosted on a server which is located in the Rackshack datacenter.

Let me explain how I did it for a friend, first you have to have a static IP address assigned to you by your ISP, then you need to register your domain name as a name server with the IP address that your ISP assigned you. Once all of this is done you can install Foxserv on your PC and you're done.