Web Hosting
 

I am new to the Linux community. I just installed FC3 on my computer. It is the only OS on the machine currently. I am running an AMD 64bit 3200 processor on a 64bit gigabyte board with 1gb ram.

What I want to know is how do I configure Linux so that I can host my own website?:confused:

Well, first off, I don't think your system is powerful enough to run a website. You're going to need at least a dual Opteron setup.

Okay, no, you won't. Anyway, I just installed FC3 tonight, and I've got my website up and running. Let's see if I can give you a little direction. If not, I hope you don't hold it against me. :)

First off, you should know / do the research to find out what sorts of programs you want to run. I suggest the Apache web server, of course, like most people would. You might also have to check whether your ISP blocks port 80 - I know that was the biggest obstacle I had, because mine does. So I host my site on a non-standard port (choose one like 8080 or 8065 or 11000, something that isn't used by anything else; I think a lot of people use 8080). When you installed Fedora, you should have checked the boxes that applied to HTML hosting (specifically Apache web server / Httpd web server, they're the same thing). If not, you'll have to install the server separately, either from the Apache website or from your installation discs. Since I'm very new to Linux, I can't help you a lot, but that sort of info should be easy to find. When I installed my setup, I actually found options that allowed for front-end configuration apps for Apache, which showed up under the Applications menu, under System Settings / Server Settings / HTTP. From there, I simply added a line that told Apache to listen to my open port (which I also have forwarded to my computer from the router of my home network. . . you need to do that unless you're directly hooked to the modem), then I made sure Apache was active and started (very intuitive interface, I'm glad it was built in to Fedora to begin with!). The only other step is to stick your HTML files (with your home page named index.html unless you edit Apache to tell it to look for other pages, which I don't bother with) into the /var/www/html folder (the "home" folder by default), and you're set! I had my girlfriend check my site just now, so I know it works from the outside world. VERY easy setup. Just make sure to restart Apache everytime you change things (besides the web pages), so it updates itself.

I might have skipped a lot of stuff, I don't know what your comfort level with website development is. I've been hosting on my W2K box for a while using Apache, so I'm a little more familiar with it. Also, I'm pretty tired today, so I hope I'm not just wasting time. I'm sure other people here can help a lot more than me, but seeing as how I just did it all 15 minutes ago, I have it all in my mind. Feel free to PM me if you want to get a dialogue going on setting this up. I'm happy to help if I can, and I got nothin' else going tomorrow. For now, though, I'm out for about 9 hours. Good luck! There's plenty of docs all over the internet (Apache.org) that will help you, along with other people around here. I just wanted to tell you that if you have Fc3, you have all the tools already at your disposal. Just add your own pages and launch.

<><

I won't hold it against you BUT I run a webserver on an old P100 with a cyrix 233 processor and 128MB RAM. If you don't intend running fancy multimedia stuff then a basic system will do the job since the limitation is not the box but your bandwidth. I have an adsl webserver where you can find a fair amount of info and links to othersa who have write-ups on the same thing.

I was totally kidding, TigerOC. Translated into non-sarcasm, the first line of my post reads: Dang, dude, I want your computer. Bandwidth is definitely the limiting factor to a good webserver, especially if you want to run anything more intensive (like flash animations) and don't want the user to sit around forever waiting for it to load. As TigerOC says, you can run a webserver on anything you can start up. I've got my good ol' Athlon 1.2 going right now, and a PIII 500 as an auxiliary computer (storage and DVD burning, mostly).

No problem SilverZero. As has been said on many fora sarcasm and humour don't come across well in print media and I wouldn't mind some of that heavy weight muscle as well.

you certainly don't need a high spec computer for a server, you biggest problem will be your internet connection, I have a PIII 1GHz with 512Mb and that can run invision power board or phpbb2 no problems at all, response and query execution times are very quick when accessing the server on the internal network, obviously from outside response times are a bit slower because I have only ADSL internet connection.

One thing I will say though, with servers you can't have too much ram

Some Problems of where to put index.html
 

I have to say that Apache was as easy to get running as SilverFox said. At this point I have the test page showing up at my site, but I am having problems getting pages into the var/www/html folder. I am really quite new to Linux so I have only really been using the GUI and only looking at the terminal.

I have been navigating to the var/www/html folder with the GUI and when I try to put a file into the folder I am getting an error that tells me I don't have permission to write to the folder. Would the root user be the only one that has access to this folder/ Also is the anything that I have to change in the /ect/httpd/conf file? Any links or simple how to's would be helpful.

Thanks,
Tadge
Fedora Core 3