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Host Your Own Web Server At Home

By Malinda Wijeratne
Ever wondered to set a webserver on your own and declare access from the Internet? Seems challenging and expensive. Yes it will be if you plan to do it professionally, but setting up a experimental and temporary one is not that hard; trust me. Here I will cover the basic procedure for setting up that experimental server. 

 What we going to need is

  • a Computer ofcourse
  • a webserver software
  • an Internet connection with a Configurable Router


Usually, your hardware resources doesn't matter as long as you are not going to host your Server long-term. Same with the Internet connection until you plan to have a considerable user community.


Web Server Software

A webserver is a software which act as a service to deliver webpages. Typically, any simple, freely available one would do(if you are smart enough you can code your own ;) - that simple!). wampserver or xampp would do.
Note: WAMP stands for Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP server.
Click Here for a List of WAMPs

Install the server software. Follow the manual, configure it and put it online with a sample webpage.


Router Configuration

Next you have to configure port forwarding settings of the router because most of the time router blocks access to your computer from the web. Open up your web browser and type the local IP address of your Router(probably 192.168.1.1), log into the router using username and password. You'll find these setting in the router setup somewhere titled 'port forwarding' or 'virtual server'. And configure the router to forward port 80 to your computer's IP Address.

Now, you have opened your server to the web. However you have to figure out the public IP address of your router to access your webserver. Simply goto Google and enter 'show my ip' and Google will display your Public IP. That is going to be the web address of your webserver so, note it down. By navigating to that address from any PC, you can access webpages on your server.

Congratulations, you have hosted your own web server!!


Things to Note

These days, most of the devices connected to the Internet are assigned Dynamic IP addresses. So, if this is the case with your PC/router, your web address may change from time to time. Yes, it can be confusing. If you plan big, you can go to your ISP(Internet Service Provider) and ask for a static IP connection, or the really simple way is use a Dynamic DNS service(I'll cover that later).

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