I had this idea for a side business because I'm tired of doing my every day job which is so annoying to deal with everyday. I was wondering if anyone knew out there how hard doing web hosting was. I know you have to be skilled in IT which I have no knowledge of but I figured if I downloaded windows home server from their website I could just mess around with it until I get good at it. What does anyone think about that? Also I know most sites that do web hosting have domain hosting and do other things too and I only want to learn how to setup a server and do web hosting first.

First off, let me start by saying that how much work it is is in large part up to you.

I would -not- recommend using windows for web hosting. If your desire is to do this as a business, I would recommend first that you learn how to interact with one of the many *nix flavors (solaris, linux(oh so many versions), BSD, what have you. I've never known anyone who ever enjoyed doing webhosting on windows.

Not to mention I just straight prefer any of the *nix flavors mentioned above over windows.


Of course, YMMV. If you need to try out linux without wiping your hdd, or even partitioning it, you can check out wubi .

Hosting your own website isn't too terribly hard or expensive. Depending on your ISP, it might not cost you anything extra at all. You could pretty much just mess around with things until it works.

Running a web host? Entirely different beast. It's one of those things that you discover as you go along all the things that you never knew you didn't know. It's also a fairly competitive market. Are you in the mood to compete with free?

Yeah I ran into a site called godaddy.com and they where doing like 4.95 for unlimited web hosting and that's every month. I guess I got influenced by this cool video called http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/. There's a butt load of charges like extra bandwidth, renting a building and keeping a sever operated. I learned about this thing called a vitural machine is that right? You can run a second operating system on your harddrive. I figured apache would be the way to go but I couldn't use it because you have to have linux or , windows nt or 9X I think.

you can run as many virtual machines as your computer can handle... for most home computers, this is 1-3, depending on what you're using them for. In order for VMs to really be useful for a business, it requires buying some very high end, expensive hardware. You then get more out of it than you would buying physical servers for everything, but it does involve a pretty big upfront cost.

For a free solution, I'd recommend xen.

Even still, it's hard to make money at web hosting. you have to have something which makes it worth paying you.

I'm no fan of godaddy though.

Ok, so, I never want to discourage entrepreneurship, but web hosting is something that will take a lot of time and money for you to get into.

Let's talk about requirements. You cannot run a virtual machine on your PC's hard drive and be a competitive web host. You need to have:

- Sufficient disk space for a lot of clients, including clients who will want to store video and audio files, as well as clients who will not want to share a server with your other clients
- Sufficient backup systems for everyone's files that can go online immediately should something happen to your main servers
- A fast enough Internet connection with enough bandwidth to host multiple clients possibly receiving thousands of inbound connections, some of which will be looking at some pretty large files. This is not something your cable company can provide for you at home.
- A place for all this stuff, the expertise to set it all up, and the time to keep it running 24/7. If you have a server hiccup, it's on you to bring it back up, every day, all the time.
- Enough money for a marketing campaign.

This is, of course, not counting the time and expense involved in setting up your business. When I set up my S-Corp, the total costs were about $2000 just for that, and the accounting and paperwork alone was about ten hours a week.

Now, a lot of the above is money, which is by far the easiest obstacle to overcome in starting a new business, but you should know what you're getting into. Unless it's just hosting a few websites for your friends or something, starting a web hosting company is an immense investment in time and money. It would be way, way, way cheaper and less demanding to start a web -development- company than a web hosting company.

Well , I thought it would be easier just to run two dedicated servers from home using a separate line for electricity costs ( I was told that you could have the electric company come in and put up a second line so I could pay the electric bill separately). I saw a couple of mini servers that where priced at about 500 bucks each and I figured sense they are small I could probably fit them under my desk and I would probably have to get extra hard drives for them too. I wasn't sure what my bandwidth is now( I do know that my download speed is 54 Mega bytes a second) and I tried going to the wide open west account page but they don't tell you up front what your plan is even though I could probably look that up in some of the paperwork I have filed. I guess i'll have to call wow and figure that out but it looks like ima have to have a separate internet connection as it is.Also I wanted to do the vm thing just to mess around with it so I can get use things like apache to get used to it first before I start anything considering my lack of IT skills.

First of all, to test your speed go to http://www.speedtest.net/. It's not 100% accurate (for instance, I've got a 100/10 connection and it gave me 70/20 as a result), but it should be semi-close.

Second, make sure your ISP likes you doing stuff like this. I'm not sure how it looks over there, but over here, there's a clause put into the contract that says you cannot use the connection as a business (they have special contracts for that, which while costs more, also guarantees a faster response time, which you'd definitely want in case something goes wrong). I suggest you call your ISP first regarding your plans (either when it comes far enough for you to actually realize the plans or straight away) to see what they have to say about it.

I'm guessing that you want to actually get into web hosting? If that's the case, I'd suggest that you decide upon something else. Web hosting companies require a HUGE capital investment due to server hardware, VMs and the proper OS to run it all. Then you have power costs, internet and bandwidth, domain name registration... It's a large investment, and especially if you are not 100% adept at networking and advertising, then it'll be a money sink.

Instead, I would suggest that you try your hand at running a business on the side that either sells a simple product or offers a service. I've personally considered starting a small business where I would fix up/optimize computers for customers at a flat rate. Host a simple website on a simple server made out of an old desktop box that I have at home; it'd be perfect!

Also, if you choose to write up your own website, I'd learn HTML. O'Reily books publishes some very good HTML/XHTML/CSS/Java script books for beginners that I would highly suggest. HTML/XHTML/CSS are usually all found within one book, while Java script is it's own beast. All are very simple to learn, while not needing any previous programming experience to get good at. Obviously, it takes time to master the art of web design, but the learning curve is very short. Honestly, I'd encourage everyone to delve into HTML, because it will only bring good things!!

And finally, if you TRULY, DEEPLY want to make money off the internet, then I would suggest buying a book on Blogging. While you might not necessarily WANT to blog for a living, a big part of blogging is getting your foot in the door, which all internet start-ups need to tackle. You'll learn strategies on how to make money off advertisements from Google and Microsoft, learn tips on how to find the right niche for you to learn and fit within, and strategies on how to deploy yourself properly to the world and attract customers. The world really is yours when you try a start-up on the web, it's just a task to find the right landing pad to land on safely

P.S. Why is Java script censored? ######??

It's a bad word?

I know the answer was posted somewhere, but it was like 2000 posts ago.

Cuz if they let you put the word java script, you can do java script, which is bad.

alright well thanks for the tips everyone this has concluded that I will not be going into this considering the amount of work and instead I'm going to attempt programming again. I failed C but that was like 4 years ago and I never tried doing it again, I've got two more semesters to go and after that i'm going to take some programming classes.

Sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news

However, there is still hope! Business everywhere that have an IT department would KILL for someone with Java programming experience. Java's easier to learn than C, and is insanely powerful. The language's specialty is client/server programming, allowing you to maintain a database on a server somewhere while also maintaining a client-based program on a remote computer, and having them talk and access each other. Any business anywhere that makes/uses tools that do anything like this need tech guys to maintain/build systems for the company.

Java has a funny syntax at times and forces Object-Oriented Programming down your throat, though once you get it, you tend to use OOP for pretty much everything, and you'll use Java for quite a lot of things... It's the Microsoft Windows of programming languages!

Speaking of Microsoft: if you choose to use that for your OS, I'd also take a look at C#. I've been delving into it a little bit and my spare time, and I gotta say, I love it a lot. It's Microsoft's true rendition of Java functionality, providing a very similar syntax. C# runs on the .NET Framework, which is a MS-based cross-platform set of rules/tools that a lot of languages can tap into, giving uniform functionality, such as garbage collection, object model, embedded support, etc. I could be missing a few things there (it's entirely possible, since MS doesn't explain it too well, damn PR...), so I'd suggest doing a little research. However, if you just want a good entry level language that's insanely powerful, learn Java first.

Real programmers use Lisp.

But its so parenthesis-y

When I started with Lisp, I thought it was kinda neat. Two weeks later, I hated it with every fiber in my body.