Easy? yes.
Digg had linked a guy who had written a tutorial on how to do it with Ubutu (The magic linux distro everyone is talking about). But there was positives and negatives.
Positive:
- Affordable
- Relatively simple with Windows and Linux (even can be secure)
- OK for small time use.
Negatives:
- ONLY ok for small time use
- You should know what you’re doing before attempting
- Your ISP has to allow it
- Heavy traffic means slow connection for you.
Now for the basics if you decide to go forward. Basic Requirements that is.
Windows:
- PII with 64MB memory and 100mb ethernet card
- Realtively fast connection DSL/Cable/Fiber
- Windows 2000 Pro or XP Pro (You can do it on older versions of OS but it may not be secure)
- ZoneAlarm Firewall (Never trust Microsofts built in firewall)
- xitami Web Server
Apache may be the most common, but it’s written mainly for *nix and doesn’t have the ease of use xitami has. PLUS there is security through obscurity. And Xitami is pretty well written at that.
Linux:
- 486 with 32 MB of memory and 100 mb Ethernet card
- Realtively fast connection DSL/Cable/Fiber
- linux distro of choice. Personally Damn Small Linux or something simple like that works best. but Ubutu or SuSE works just as well. (or knoppix or gentoo or Coyote or…)
- Apache (comes with distro most often)
This really depends on which distro you use. Some cases it’s just as easy as selecting the options to turn on the web server and shut down all outside ports. You could also need to manually configure some thing. One nice thing is that with linux there are tons of how-to’s. Just google search and you’re set. Or “man program_name” and you’ll have instructions on how to do something.
In both cases once you have the OS installed and webserver running, make sure you have locked everything down, and test you can get to your webserver from another computer on your local network. And THEN allow outside traffic to the box. It doesn’t take long for a box to be rooted… so make sure it’s secure before doing so. And then set yourself up with an account with no-ip.com or dyndns.org and have a sub-domain or domain name point to your dynamic or static IP. And you’re set.
On the other hand if you’re wise you’ll just go with 1&1.com or dreamhost.com and get yourself hosting that won’t go down when you reboot, or connection drops. that won’t slow your web browsing when someone starts looking over your pictures and is faster then what little upload you may have.
