There are different reasons for why we might want to build our own web server at home. Some might be that we just want to be able to place our own information on the internet, some might be that we want to be able to access information from our home computer at all times and from anywhere. We can use the webserver to show our shared directory, to include information, movies, documents, and any other information that we place on our own web server, which is ours and we can do with it whatever we want.

What do we need to do to establish our own web server at home? How much should it cost us? What type of communication and network do we need to configure? I will answer all of those questions and you will discover it’s not that hard to do. The building of our own web server shouldn’t cost us money, especially if we already have a computer, we can use a Linux based server with Apache on it, and we have a web

You might say, hey I am using windows, and I would still want to use windows, so my answer is – “Virtual Server“. We can host a virtual server on our Microsoft windows computer, and install on that VMware server – the Linux operating system we want to use as our home web server or we can just create a partition and install on that partition that web server, and just load into the Linux operating system, and let that run always, so the webserver will be online and accessible from the outside at all time.server alive and kicking.

I will explain how to install a Linux based webserver here in a bit, but first, let’s just understand the network configuration we need to establish to make it work like any other web server on the internet.

What we need are:

  1. Computer – any PC will do (Linux operating system doesn’t require much).
  2. Installed a Linux operating system with Apache.
  3. Request a constant IP from our ISP. (So we will have a permanent IP to host our web server – since it has to be always up, and without a constant IP, our home IP changes regularly, and we won’t be able to access it).
  4. This is not a MUST – we can buy a domain – (we can access our home web server using the constant IP, but it might be either nicer to access it using our own domain name which is easier to remember instead of remembering an IP number, or if we want our home web server to be a real server on the outside, we will need a domain, so it will be included in the internet world as a regular websites do.

Installing a Linux based Web Server:

  • After installation – perform these two commands, to get the Ubuntu repository updated and upgraded.
    * apt-get update
    * apt-get upgrade
  • Install Apache2: The instructions are as follows:
    * apt-get install apache2
    |
    ** the root directory of apache to place the website files is /var/www/
  • If you want to use PHP, you can install it by using:
    * apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5
  • If you are going to use a Database, then install the MySQL.
    * apt-get install MySQL-server libapache2-mod-auth-MySQL php5-MySQL

For those who are not web designers, you might consider using “DRUPAL“, like your web designer, it is a nice tool, that with a bit of study, you can have a web-server up and running in no time (well in a short time). You can get all the info you need on Drupal, in the below website, install it, and learn a bit on how to configure it, and your all done.

http://drupal.org/