I have a very powerful computer but I never play games or anything, I just use it for music, some browsing and webmastering. Could I host a site on my computer and still use it? I don't know anything about behind-the-scenes of servers so I decided to finally ask .
It depends on how strong is your Internet connection, does it have a static ip address or does it change each time you connect to Internet, it would require also some software to be installed... etc. Remember also that regarding that Internet Connection speed, it is very important how fast is your Uplink. Anyway... you could find some very cheap hosting packages on the net now days... why would you bother with this...
My connection is 40MB up and down, I'm thinking about this because I may need a dedicated server in a few weeks and they're pretty expensive. Static IP.
It's ok if you have a static (dedicated) IP and your connection is stable. Your computer must be always on (some people dislike that because of the background noise - including me). It's ideal situation for a single website with low traffic.
Not only that, you might want to find out what your ISP's cap is. They allow people to use a certain amount of BW per month before blocking you. YOu really need to check that before making ur server at home.
That sounds fine.40mb up/down may do the work. Static ip... great. Then just make sure your ISP doesn't limit your bandwidth usage, and that's it. If they don't then you are all set to install everything you need. You do not need too much RAM though... 1GB is just fine.
Some ISP's do not allow you to use their internet service for hosting, so check the TOS on that. You can easily turn your computer into a server by downloading Apache. It's going to let your computer face port 80 on production. Make sure you configure your DNS (locally) to Apache, and you are good to go. Anymore questions-- you can PM me.
I many mainstream ISP's like Comcast, Road Runner and Cox Cable have the outgoing standard HTTP port 80 blocked so you can't host websites to the outside world. You can try an alternative non-standard port specified on your webserver.
Windows Server is just a daemon based more open socket layers blown up ver. of NT (XP), you can run any application normally including games. Its what I use. I also use a dynamic IP. Its kind of fun and I have zero down time. I have my main domain name on Godaddy, it 302 forwards my URL to the hostname I use at DynDNS, DynDNS provides you with a simple prog that automatically sends DynDNS your dynamic IP and attachs it to your domain. Their free service allows you to choose a domain name amongst the various domains they own. Or you can pay to have your domain fowarded to your dynamic IP (with app) it makes life alot simpler.
I built a new desktop and found myself with a really fast spare computer. So I formatted it and put Debian Linux on it. I was using it as a workstation and it had xwindows (gnome and kde) and also was running wine with wine-doors so I could use windows software on it, like photoshop, dreamweaver, office 2003 and some other needed software. You can run it as a server as well as workstation. I couldn't get a static ip so I used my personal domain name with dyndns.com to to accommodate the dynamic ip issue. The mountain I live on has a rainy season and power was always going out so I decided to format the server and set it up as a server online. I paid to colocate the server at www.alphared.com (I used to be a systems admin at alphared so I know how good the service is there). They are one of the few datacenters that still allow tower colocation. Most have moved to rackservers only so be sure to ask before signing up anywhere else. I would not only run websites from it but also torrentflux which allowed me to use my server for hosting torrents and also downloading them unattended. Lots of options here... plus you can learn how to admin your own linux server and possibly slip into a career as a systems admin. Thats how I got started. I've been a systems admin for Alphared.com and Hostgator.com and even worked as a network security admin on an airforce base. So learning linux and networking could really help you out later on.
If you dont know about messing with linux, try a livecd of Ubuntu Linux. You can just put in the cdrom and restart the computer and linux will come up. When you are finished, just take out the cd and restart the computer and it will be like it was never there. If you decide you like it a lot then you can install it and use it for surfing, music, downloading and a server at the same time. Didn't mean to get all technical above.