Well I'm sick of waiting on other companys to make simple changes, waiting for them to get servers back online, and sick of paying for my hosting, when I have a fast internet connection at home and have very low traffic sites to host :)

I am getting pretty comfortable with the linux terminal, and am already used to things such as cpanel and so on. I've been doing web dev for years so I know my way around this and that, but I have a few questions.


To start hosting these sites myself, I set up a server (Pentium4 w/ 2gb ram) on a 160gb SATA drive. I installed Ubuntu Server 9.04 and added the "dns server", "lamp server" and "openssh server" options during the install.

This is where things get confusing, and I could use anybodys help :)

I am able to setup LAMP, and host a site, no problems there. I have my router directing port 80 traffic to the servers static ip, and the site runs fine on my ip address, BUT...

Issue 1) My IP keeps changing every few weeks (from my isp)

Issue 2) I do not know how I can setup multiple domain names to be hosted from my server.


I have been looking into services such as No-IP and am told that using their premium services, for $25 a year or whatever, I can set my server up through them and I will be able to figure stuff out from there.

I currently have a free no-ip account, and have the no-ip client running on the server, and it seems like its working fine.


I am not interested in running software like cpanel or anything fancy. As long as I can get to phpMyAdmin and can setup an FTP account to connect to the server, I will be happy :) I just need to learn how to setup the multiple domains.

I don't need mail services or statistics software crap, I just need php hosting with mysql for multiple domains.


If there is a better OS to use for this, please point me in the right direction. If you have any tips or tricks for me, they are very appreciated.

Thanks for any info!

Look at your httpd.conf and look for virtual hosts; that should give you enough keywords to google the instructions and examples ;)

i.e. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/vhosts/name-based.html

Look at your httpd.conf and look for virtual hosts; that should give you enough keywords to google the instructions and examples ;)
Wow, that alone got me to understand it much better.


But back to a question I should probably ask first and foremost. What OS? I'm sure there are plenty of debates over one or another, but are there OS's better suited for sitting there and just acting as a webserver?

Thanks again!

Crath,

The OS is choosen a LAMP (Linux Apache Mysql PHP/Perl) configuration will always be a Linux one, which linux distribution you choose is mostly the one you are most familiar with.

You will see a lot of RedHat based configurations like CentOS and Fedora to be rather popular for server usage.

Which linux OS is best for webhosting ? no clue, there are some major differences between UNIX variations when it comes to handling certain databases but if this matters for the average webhosting server; i doubt.

Whatever distribution you choose; make sure you do a minimal install, you do not want anything and everything installed just because you 'might' need it.

Crath,

The OS is choosen a LAMP (Linux Apache Mysql PHP/Perl) configuration will always be a Linux one, which linux distribution you choose is mostly the one you are most familiar with.

You will see a lot of RedHat based configurations like CentOS and Fedora to be rather popular for server usage.

Which linux OS is best for webhosting ? no clue, there are some major differences between UNIX variations when it comes to handling certain databases but if this matters for the average webhosting server; i doubt.

Whatever distribution you choose; make sure you do a minimal install, you do not want anything and everything installed just because you 'might' need it.

Alright, well since I am pretty comfortable with Ubuntu (and run ubuntu as my desktop) I guess I'll just stick with Ubuntu Server.

I guess the next step is, do some more research on that httpd.conf file and figure out how to set up multiple sites, and then figure out how to work No-IP? Is No-IP the right solution for me?

Thanks again! :D

Is No-IP the right solution for me?



I can't give you an answer on this, as i simply never where in the position of using such a service; but i am sure someone comes along with a broader experience on this particular subject :D