I was at my buddy's place he is a walking encycloperdia and he says he builds websites has made over 1000 templates himself and i said who is your server?And he said he serves himself.Is this posssible he says he pays noone his home computer is the server??? is this all just one big buffet serve your self take what you want?Feedback please and thank you in advance.
Sure you can, but it's not likely going to be to your benefit. There are others here much more knowledgeable about servers and hosting than I, but with the cost of hosting now days I just do not see how you could DIY and be cost effective & secure.
about securing the server is not a big problem there is a lot of articles and information on how to secure your server, win/ linux..., the biggest problem is the Upload speed , your provider may not offer what you really need to provide a good speed for your visitors when they access to your website... but if you doing this just for fun and want to learn and try stuff , it is easy and it is good to try it
A server is, afterall, a computer. However, I would not recommend hosting your own website for a variety of reasons.
It's often against your ISP's TOS, you definitely need to check there first if you really want to host on your own. It's not uncommon for people to experience charges or have their service cut off for this.
Secondly, you need to know how to administrate a server and use whatever platform you apply - Linux, Windows, Mac, etc. It's not simply a matter of reading a few articles and becoming a server administrator. Running a website using command line is a heck of a lot different than hosting with a control panel and managed service. Security will be a problem and if you're hosting on a network, it may mean more is exposed than just your service. Proceed with extreme caution.
Thirdly, it's not going to be particularly cost effective unless you go open source. Even then, however, your money will be measured in the form of time with the learning curve.
Fourthly, yes, as stated, your speed is going to be slow. Most hosting is done on at least a 10mbps connection. That's a heck of a lot more than cable, DSL, and so on.
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If your ISP permits and if you have the Server Administration skills, sure you can host it on your own. But, I doubt about the cost effectiveness of hosting.
The other guys made great points. One of the other reasons to pay for hosting is disaster recovery and redundancy. A good hosting service will provide regular backups as a part of your service. In addition they will have a solid recovery plan in case of disaster.
The most likely event to affect your site availability would be power outages. Legitimate hosting providers would have you covered with a UPS and backup generators. Keep this in mind if you decide to host your own site. It costs a lot of money to keep a site available 24/7.
Most of customers are looking for stability as well. Most want to have their web sites live during SE updates etc. I believe that every customer on paid web hosting know why he is with this or that company and why does he pay for that.
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The most serious issue you may have with hosting your sites on your own server is the bandwidth your site might need, as it's really difficult to get anything the worst datacenter offers.
As most of the other responses state, the largest issue with hosting from home is the bandwidth and transfer fees. Your home network probably does not run at the same speeds that a datacenter might offer. There are many other factors involved, including:
-Some ISPs use virtual IP addresses, which would cause DNS issues every time your network resets.
-The hardware requirements are substantial. If you decide to use your home network as a server environment, you will probably need to upgrade your network switch(es), computer or server (if you decide to spend thousands of dollars on an actual server), network cables, and more.
These costs can add up quickly. After calculating the expenses involved, you will probably find that using a hosting company to provide you with server space will save you money while increasing the quality of your hosting environment.
Trying to run your own server from your home PC or even a standard server from your home network is like trying to make bread with home grown ingredients. It might be interesting for a short while, but the costs along with time and effort involved are often not worth the substandard result.
