Creating my own website and hosting it, my options?

Nebell

Nebell

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I hope I won't confuse anyone because I'm confused myself.

I want to register a domain and create my own website and been looking at options.

I have 100mbit internet (50-100 up/down) and a NAS server. Would it be viable for me to host it myself (and maybe later upgrade to 250-500mbit up/down) or just get one of the packages available online?

Godaddy.com seems to have a bunch of not too expensive options, especially if I only opt for the domain and full privacy option while leaving web hosting and email hosting to my NAS server.
They also have web and email hosting but those quickly add to the price.

I don't mind learning, but I have very little experience in web hosting and web design (it was like a decade ago when I last time tried that).
 
As cheap as good reliable web hosting is, there is no reason to try anything yourself.

Plus your isp will hate you. And you'd have to have a static IP. Not to mention you'd want 100% uptime which likely in a non data center evironment you are not going to get that.

You can find hosting super cheap if you ask around and look hard enough.
 
I would concur, and advocate you do not host it. Don't forget - you can buy your domain name in one place, and your hosting elsewhere. For example - I have handful of domains through 1and1, but use A1WHS for hosting plans. Each is maybe $28 a year so that's nice.
 
modi123 said:
I would concur, and advocate you do not host it. Don't forget - you can buy your domain name in one place, and your hosting elsewhere. For example - I have handful of domains through 1and1, but use A1WHS for hosting plans. Each is maybe $28 a year so that's nice.
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Exactly this. My domains were all purchased separate and hosted elsewhere.
 
You guys are right. I do love to learn new things but at the moment I have other stuff for me.

But I am lost in the sea of hosting.
And it's not just that I need to find a cheap and reliable one. That is actually the easiest part.

I do not know what I need. Many hosting websites offer a lot of packages.
For example NameCheap offers shared hosting, WordPress hosting (I might want this because it supposedly makes creating website easy), private email hosting, website hosting...
Do I need all of those if I want say nebell@nebell.com email address and do I need shared hosting, WordPress hosting AND website hosting or is just WordPress enough?
 
What's the site going to be about? Just a personal log of stuff, or what?

For the most part - minimal disk space 300mb or >, ok ish bandwidth 10gb or >, and decent cost. In the 'figuring it out' game shared hosting isn't a big issue.

Your email address would be typically provided by your hosting.

The barebones hosting should have a handful of 'click to install' packages for you.. wordpress,drupal, joomla, etc. Just make sure your plan comes with at least one database... a relatively recent version of PHP and perl and you should be fine.
 
I recommend pointing whatever domain you purchase to something like Zoho. They have a great free service for email, and handle all the spam filtering, etc for you. They have guides on it. Just for specificity's sake, you want to point your MX records to Zoho. The "MX records" being the important bit in regards to your domain name.
You can also checkout cloudflare. They provide a great free service for your DNS.
For hosting, there are a lot of great options. Typically, you'll want to shop around and find what's right for you. If you aren't sure what to build your site with, inmotion hosting has a great website builder that they include for free with your hosting account (as do some others). If you choose to explore their options, you are at the very bottom tier for shared hosting plan. Only a couple bucks a month. Their customer support is the best in the industry, from my experience. This is why I would recommend them over anyone else. I'm finding more and more the value in great customer service, when you need it.
 
Then you don't need a whole mess. Shared is fine.. a bit of space.. and some bandwidth as I mentioned above.
 
throw it in an s3 bucket or put it on github...

for anything more than that? there's always digital ocean or vultr...

that said, if you don't mind the occasional downtime and would like a fun project, a random website with your personal photos on it is a great type of website to host at home... at that point all you need is a web server and some pinholes in your firewall and forwarding in your NAT table...

make sure your ISP allows inbound port 443 and go to town with a dedicated VM, and isolate it from your inside network as much as possible... you can do it a lot of different ways... a linux VM with web server software on it... if it were me i'd probably use nginx on debian, secure it with a let's encrypt certificate and probably use some open source photo gallery web software

EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_photo_gallery_software

cool place to get started^
 
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As stated, a website is way overkill, not for a beginner to host and a security liability. There are more simple and safer ways to just share photos by uploading to hosting platforms.
 
Mega6 said:
As stated, a website is way overkill, not for a beginner to host and a security liability. There are more simple and safer ways to just share photos by uploading to hosting platforms.
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Agree with this all the way. Don't start opening ports and running potentially vulnerable software on your home network. It can become more trouble than it's worth. Especially when we're talking about a couple bucks a month to pay a hosting company...
Best advice is just to be sure you do your own regular backups from the hosting company, so if they lose your data, you're not SOL
 
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If you're feeling adventurous, you can just go spin up a $5 VPS.

Debian is probably a good place to start. Grab nginx, get a cert from let's encrypt.
 
socK said:
If you're feeling adventurous, you can just go spin up a $5 VPS.

Debian is probably a good place to start. Grab nginx, get a cert from let's encrypt.
Click to expand...
That’s what I would start with too ... no need for lots cpu , plus I would use some ready-to-use templates (not Wordpress) and adjust the template to your needs. Then there is enough learning experience to build on

Like from here: https://startbootstrap.com/template-categories/landing-pages/
But there are many more.
 
ive been running multiple websites for years from my home, never had any problem

just get an old computer, download xampp, and away you go

its good for learning, eventually i moved my important websites online but i always till run some websites at home
 
Many of the hosting packages will include a variety of things you need - I know 1and1 will do the webspace, email and allow Wordpress installs in their base package. I wouldn't buy the domain there as they're at $15/year for .coms which is higher than you can find it elsewhere...
 
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