Could anyone please help me with my school project?

I need to create a website for a company and then host it on my own. I'm also planning to use Dreamweaver and Windows 7 for the project.

What I need to know is..

1. Can I host my created website on my own computer?
2. do i need to use any other software to host my website other than Dreamweaver?
3. Lastly is there a better alternative to dreamweaver? Im only a beginner.

Thank You in Advance.

1. yes, if your ISP allows this. It's a pointless thing to do though, host it on a simple hosting company plan, it tends to be cheaper than the electricity you would use if it's a separate machine.

2. yeah, a web server would be a start. That's an awful lot more important than what you use to write code with.

3. vi suits me better.

dreamweaver will not serve a website, just help you create some bloated webpages. You probably don't want to write code at all, maybe use a cms or blog service instead, like wordpress? what do you actually want to do with this site?

Yes and yes. Download and install Apache.

Any text editor is better than Dreamweaver. Even Notepad is better than Dreamweaver.

Personally, I recommend Komodo Edit.

Notepad++ and Visual Studio Express are two other popular choices.

If the company is real, then this is idiotic.

Yes, you can, but I wouldn't recommend it in this situation.

Dreamweaver is a tool for creating websites. It's got nothing to do with hosting. You'd have to run a webserver (eg. Apache).
Since you're stating that you want to host the website on Windows 7, you might want to ask on some windows forum.


Since you're a beginner, I'd strongly recommend hosting it via some hosting company. It's not expensive, but will save you
a lot of hassle.


How complex is this website going to be? Perhaps you could use a content management system like Joomla or Drupal.

just a simple company website, view products, clients able to create their own account and view or inquire about their order status, also to pay online(optional).

I haven't thought much about the website features yet.

I have another question..

Do I need to write the code for the features I've mentioned or will the company that will host my website provide it?

In that case a CMS (content management system) is highly recommended. Most hosting companies provide installation scripts for Joomla or Drupal.

There are many additions to CMS to enable extra functionality (like payment systems, etc)

i see. I'll research on joomla and drupal.

Which do you think is easier to use?

Thanks for the fast reply! And thanks to all people that will further help!

Wait I just need to clarify.

I need to "create" the website with the features I mentioned and I need the source code.

So what I'll do is create the website using joomla or drupal and then pay a hosting company to host my created website? Is that correct?

no, you go to somewhere like dreamhost.com and on a control panel just click a button to deploy the kind of site you want. No coding required whatsoever, just a bunch of clicks and choosing themes.

I think joomla might be slightly more intuitive for new-comers.

If you don't like stock joomla/drupal templates, there are lots of websites where you can download/purchase all sorts of templates.

tbh i would reccomend forgetting windows 7 for actually HOSTING the website, if you aren't planning on using any php scripts then an old pentium 4 class or higher with 1-4 gigs of ram and 160+ gigs of hd space (something you could pick up at a garage sale and modify cheaply) should be enough, after that, install a linux server with apache, and samba, and run that as a headless web server, then if you still want to use dreamweaver, you can mount the server's web root as a samba share on your windows 7 machine
but overall i would purchase a hosting plan on a third party host like godaddy and go from there, the end result will be more reliable and faster.

Windows 7 has a built-in connection limit (10 or 20 incoming connection of once). The limit can be bypassed, but that may be a violation of license agreement. As a result, although it is possible to host a website on windows 7, I'm not sure if this will be a good idea - IMO the OS wasn't meant to be used this way.

For a "school project" there should be several free hostings (typically quality isn't that good, some features won't be available, but you get what you pay for).

Many companies choose not to host their own websites, but rather to place them on hosting services, for security reasons. They don't want to open their firewalls to anonymous visitors.

I think you need to start by learning something about how websites work.

About dot com is good for basic information on this sort of stuff:

http://webdesign.about.com/od/before...ld_website.htm

You can also download and install Xampp and play with it. Note that it is not designed for hosting a website for public access.