Website Hosting Questions
 

A project I am working on here at home it to ge a server setup in which I can host a few websites. Domains will be registered with an outside provider and simply pointed to my server.

One site I would also like to have a forum on.

That should be doable ?

The requirements would be simple. Register a few domains and then at home have the site itself on my server.

I get confused on which MS product to use for this, SQL or Server 2008 or any other number of packages LOL.

Anyone here do any of this kind of thing before and willing to guide me through some of this ? :)

Currently I have a Aion Private server running on a AMD 965 @ 3.9ghz headless machine which seems to be running great so far.

If anyone is interested in getting on that let me know.

Yes, Buckeye, I have some experience in web hosting. If you could describe the type of websites you are standing up plus potential traffic [be sure to include headroom for future growth] as my main concern with most residential hosting is usually internet bandwidth if you are planning on a medium to large site[s]. I can also make recommendations on non-gaming server software, if you would like.

Hey that would be great and thanks for the help.
I have been looking at so many different ways to do this that I am unsure what all teh software packages actually do anymore HAHA.

I do have a Aion PServer up and running but looking at hosting maybe 10 others and not large sites at all.

Yes my upload speed here with comcast is 2mb/s so its not super great

Bill what happened to your uber internet? Did they finally take it away?

No I still have it. Just as time goes on things improve and I havent upgraded.
Example... to get 50mb/s and 10mb/s down is over $200 a month here :(
I am at 16mb/s 2mb/s down here now.

After reading this I started having concerns about doing all this, and the propper way to do it.

http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/hostmyown.html

So I have been looking into this
http://www.microsoft.com/express/Default.aspx

Which has all the tools. I have everything also but that has a the platform installer which has a ton of neat stuff. I have most of that anyway.
http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx

So as I am a noob and a lot of this stuff I am unclear what MS SQL 2008 R2 Web actually does vs others. It apears to be a whole setup that does everything but actually host.

For that I have heard I need Apache and perhaps this package
http://www.wampserver.com/en/

So teh more I look into this the deeper and more confusing it becomes LOL

I would prefer to do this all in MS software, but I think there are easyer ways maybe

it does get complicated but its not impossible to do as you know by setting up your game servers, its about persistance. Security would be my main concern as you don't want to end up being a drone for mallys.

Bingo

Bill. Hosting "some websites" on your home server is one thing. Hosting a forum and a few websites will be entirely different.

At 2Mb/s you might be best hosting a rarely used couple of sites. Never more than a couple of people on it.

The database is easy. for free use MySQL same darn thing as MSs stuff but completely free. Look into OSS. (mysql)

MS has two versions of their SQL software... one is free to use, one is not.. for what you want (more than one DB with same software, I would expect that is not the free version).

Key to open source is protection. You will have to pay attention. Open source loves to tout itself as the key to security. And it is if you pay attention for hte average user, windows is just as secure as linux IMHO. UNIX was known as "the hackers playground."

Much simpler (and if your time is valuable, than also cheaper) is to get a dedicated server, and host all the sites from there.. you can usually get a dedicated server for about 100-200 a month. 100 buck range would probably be enough unless your 4-5 sites are going to be high traffic.

Might just tell them to go with MSoffice live sites.. pretty cheap.. MS's bandwidth and have the option to build your own sites within their app languages.

Good advise there. The more I think about this the better off it is to go with a host, pay the small fee and be done with and all the head aches.

Hey buck I used yahoo small business hosting and wordpress for setup, fast, affordable and pretty good looking I think.

Good advice here, you guys have covered most of all I have to say, lol. Also, I would consider a LAMP setup [Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP]. You can use just about every CMS / forum software, WordPress, vBulletin, Drupal and some others I am not familiar with.

I've found with web hosts that bandwidth isn't usually the issue. Generally most webhosts will give you more than enough bandwidth even on shared hosting plans. My bet is you will run out of CPU and memory before bandwidth.

Like the folks before me, I highly recommend going with a hosted platform, especially if you want to have even a small forum. I hope this helps.