can i make my pc web server

[vicky47]

i have a very stupid question ...can i make my pc a web sever ...where i can host my website with out to buy any space or domain name .....if yes how and if no why...

[rendrag]

short answer: yes you can.

long answer: it takes some configuration, but it can be done. You have to configure your router to forward the correct ports, and contend with a couple items ISP's throw at you because they don't want a consumer grade web account running a webserver. You'd need to sign up with something like www.no-ip.com so it can work around the blocks imposed by your isp.

Dynamic IP - unless your service provider gave you a static IP address, you are dynamic. That means your IP could change once the lease expires (it expires based on what the ISP's DHCP server tells it to). That could break your website as www.vicky47.com is pointing to 1.2.3.4, but your new IP is 1.2.3.5.

most ISP's will block port 80 inbound for consumer-grade accounts. Port 80 is what you need for generic http to work off of. It's easy enough to change the port that IIS would work on (assuming you're using a Microsoft OS), but then you need to redirect all traffic to that different port number. Whichever dynamic dns service you go with should support that feature automatically.

Once you get that working, you can run a webserver from your home PC. Be careful though... once you're on the web, you're there for somebody to try to hack in. That's why I'd recommend maybe setting up a seperate PC to act as your webserver. That way if that system gets hacked, the hackers don't control your main PC.

[eyeball]

i would not recommend it, to run a web server safely you need a DMZ and a dedicated box, it would be cheaper and safer to buy hosting

[Tripredacus]

i would not recommend it, to run a web server safely you need a DMZ and a dedicated box, it would be cheaper and safer to buy hosting

Not to mention a commercial internet account with your ISP!

[snowden]

you can try EasyWeb server, http://easywebserv.sourceforge.net/ (PHP+MYSQL) or go for a perl+mysql pack like XAMPP, or the devside.net which has php+mysql+perl+jsp.