Setting up a webhost?

[GregM]

Can someone point me towards a tutorial about setting up your ow web host?

I use Lunarpages now and they are changing things and becoming unreliable.
Where I am moving they offer 6 meg down (probably 5 meg in reality) which is about 5 times faster than what I get up here in WA.

Aside from setting up my own host can someone suggest a new commercial host?

PS
This would only be for my own domains

[GreyGeek]

http://www.hostingadvice.com/reviews/linux/

I've used several, all Linux, ranging from $3/mo to $7/mo. They pretty much offer the same features and tools.

Get one based on Ubuntu or Debian and you won't have a distro culture shock. Most use CPanel as a user interface to do maintenance, and Wordpress as the web page design tool. Wordpress works OK, once you get used to it, but it is like designing web pages with handcuffs on. Other features, like sales carts, blogs, comment sections, etc., are available for extra charges. I just used mine to host family tree web pages. I usually bypassed Wordpress by designing my pages locally with a WYSIWYG designer tool and then uploaded the html pages, pics, etc., to the website via FTP, which most sites give as part of the base price.


Know also that most inexpensive hosting sites use the same IP address for several domains. so
whois 23.239.29.201
for example, may show more than one domian.

Why? Your web page is, in effect, in your "home" account and you don't have the root password. They won't give it to you either because usually you are not the only customer on that sever and they couldn't have you rummaging around in other customers accounts. IOW, there are multiple "home" accounts on a hosting server. Your access to your "home" account is usually limited to using CPanel.

Most will also offer 1 to 5 email addresses as well. More expensive plans can offer 50, 100 or unlimited email accounts.

You will, of course, have to register your domain name, IF it is available, and that registration fee is sometimes part of the hosting package and sometimes it is extra. You may have to renew that registration periodically.

For the most part having your own web site is a lot of fun. In your HTML designs there is a section of the HTML header element titled "keywords". You can stuff that variable with lots of words describing what your web page is about. A lot of people load it up with a ton of words, and often include porn words.

<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, any, other, words, you, want">

When search engines crawl your webpages they will link those words with your site in their listings. Some engines pickly only the first few and not the whole list, but space is cheap.

Your authoritative source for HTML5 design is here:
https://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
It also includes test pages so you can experiment and learn.

[GregM]

I think I have about 5 domains currently and all of them have emails with tons of forwards for each email.
I might be dropping a couple of domains in the near future.
They are all very simple "just for fun" domains like for weather and webcam etc. No ordering stuff or anything like that.

[GregM]

"Ipage" has caught my attention a couple of times

[GreyGeek]

IF you decide to set up your own host, I'd check with your ISP's Terms of Service (ToS) first. Most forbid running a web stie on your connection unless you keep it private (192.* ). Anyway, IF your IP address is dynamic you'd probably lose any that happened to find you before it changed at your next router reboot.

[GregM]

They say I can have a static IP for $10 per mo

[whatthefunk]

Do you write your own webpages or do you want a webhost with a page builder? Also, do you want to set it all up yourself or do you prefer a simple-to-setup, CPanel type host?

[GregM]

I write my own when I can figure out how to do what I want

[whatthefunk]

I use DigitalOcean and am very happy. Have a private virtual server for about $5 a month. Have to set it all up yourself though and there is no UI to help you.

[claydoh]

I use DigitalOcean and am very happy. Have a private virtual server for about $5 a month. Have to set it all up yourself though and there is no UI to help you.

They have tons of how-to articles on how to set up various servers and admin tasks. Linode has this as well. I'm currently pretending to migrate my domain there as my long time web host doesn't support Let's Encrypt free SSL certs. May even set up a mail server and VPN there as well if I ever get the energy to make the moves.

Sent from my LG-H931 using Tapatalk

[MoonRise]

I use DigitalOcean and am very happy. Have a private virtual server for about $5 a month. Have to set it all up yourself though and there is no UI to help you.

Never heard of them and took a look. Interesting concept there.

[whatthefunk]

Never heard of them and took a look. Interesting concept there.

I moved to them from shared hosting a few years ago and have never looked back. Doing all the server set up yourself takes a bit of time, but as was mentioned, they have tons of help articles and their customer support is quite good. They are linux servers so if you're ok in the command line you shouldn't have too much trouble.

[GregM]

I use DigitalOcean and am very happy. Have a private virtual server for about $5 a month. Have to set it all up yourself though and there is no UI to help you.

That might be beyond my skill set...

[whatthefunk]

Perfect opportunity to expand your skill set then!