How to Build a Web Server

If you want to have all your business information accessible online where-ever you are, or you want to have your own server for your own website, you will have to build your own web server. If you have a little skill and ability to self-learn, this may be away for you to solve your needs without employing specialised business IT support – for some time anyway. Here is a general and simplified look at the steps…

Step 1. Computer. You will need a very good computer. It is recommended that it has at least 4GB of RAM and plenty of hard-drive space. The space on the hard-drive will be all the space that you have for your website. Obviously the better the computer you have, the better your web-server functions will be. The processor is not as important as a lot of RAM and a good high-speed hard-drive. Get another second hard-drive – explained later.

Step 2. Power. You might want to think of back-up power source. If you have a black out your website will go down and that could be at crucial times. If it is for your business you will need to access your information at all times and it is imperative you have an alternate power source just in case. You also want to make sure you have power-surge protection.

Step 3. Internet. You will need good high speed internet connected to your computer at all times. You will need to purchase a permanent IP address from your internet service provider. Make sure that the domain registrar has dynamic DNS services if you have a dynamic IP. This will be a fixed address of you web server, if it keeps changing (dynamic IP address), the internet user will not be able to connect with your web server upon which your website is sitting.

Step 4. The next step to build a web server is to install the software required for a web server. This software is responsible for finding the requested web page. After installing the web server software, configure the software accordingly so that the search for web pages within the server is easy. When any internet user types the URL (location or page) of your site, the web server software of your computer (now web server), searches for that location and particular page, and sends that page to the user. Kind of like the office secretary that finds everything that you are looking for in your office. You ask him/her, they find it and send it to you. This is what the software functions as.

That is the basics, now you just need to upload your website on to your own web server. Just remember, you have no IT support. Make sure you make regular back-ups, even several times a day – the reason for the second hard-drive. Who wants to have a crash and not have a back-up? It doesn’t matter how many times it is said – there are only two types of people, those who have lost data, and those who will!

Comments are closed!