Need Help On Website Hosting

[Carlos Kerika]

Hello Guys, can i host my website on my own computer?

If YES, what are the requirements? what are the limitations to hosting your own website?
If NO, what are the reasons?

Your answers will be much appreciated.

[Rob Whisonant]

In short, it's not a good idea. Almost all hosting companies have a clause in their TOS that you are not allowed to run a server unless you have a business grade account. If you get caught, you would most likely lose your Internet access.

Plus, you can get a hosting account for as little as a few dollars a month? So why would you want to even consider trying to run a website on your home computer? It makes zero sense.

[Carlos Kerika]

Thank you for your answer.

If I take the following into consideration, I can still host it:
•I setup a WWW server software on my computer. A software that will allow Internet users to access the web files on my computer.
•My Internet service provider to support my running websites on my home computer.
•My computer to stay on at all times.
•My website to load much faster with a fast home internet connection.

[Rob Whisonant]

Thank you for your answer.

If I take the following into consideration, I can still host it:
•I setup a WWW server software on my computer. A software that will allow Internet users to access the web files on my computer.
•My Internet service provider to support my running websites on my home computer.
•My computer to stay on at all times.
•My website to load much faster with a fast home internet connection.

Since you already made your decision, just do it.

Give it a try and let us know how it goes. I already know the answer. But sometimes people just need to learn the lesson the hard way.

If you are doing this for fun, that's great. If you are doing it to run a business, you already failed.

[Carlos Kerika]

Wow... You are so straight forward with your answers. Believe you me, I will not even trying to Host my website . Seems you have seen many fail with this technique. Thank you very much for your advice Rob.

[24x7csm]

Hosting a website at a home computer is not recommended , There are a lot of quality hosting providers and you should reach out to them with your requirements. The reason to host your website with quality hosting provider is you get 24x7support , ample of amount of space and bandwidth and speed.

[MarcS]

If you host website on your own computer then you need to take care of few thing before starting.
1. You need to have continuous internet connection with a backup connection in place so if one goes down the other one kicks in and your website will be up.

2. You need to have continuous power supply to keep your computer working.

3. You need to keep your computer updated to keep it safe from malware, DDoS attacks, Ransomware etc.

4. You need to have a cooling solution as computer tends to get heat up if run 24/7.

This is the main reason you should host your website with a hosting company as they take care all of these.

[DanielN]

There is literally no point as it would be more expensive to run it on your computer.
It also costs money to keep your computer always turned on. Not to mention the extra work that is needed to host it on your PC.
Now that you can buy hosting for 1-3USD /month there really no point hosting it on your computer.

[buzybee-kevin]

Here is the problem with hosting at home. For one home internet connections usually have a good download link. But there upload is very slow and that is where you’re going to have problems. Websites rely holey on their upload link to send the data to the visitor so you need a good upload link. Home internet connections just don't have any upload bandwidth.

Next is you need a dedicate ip address which is going to be expensive even if your provider will even allow it. So you’re going to have a dynamic ip address, every time your router is restarted or your provider changes your ip address your website will not be available. This will cause problems because when a websites ip address changes it will take a couple days possibly for the new settings to take effect. So possibility once a week or month your website will not be available for a couple days. So as far as SEO and search engines you’re going to suck in this area.

There is no need to worry about power or cooling home computers are already well designed for cooling. And a single website is not going to use hardly any CPU power to cause a cooling problem especially since you not going to be getting any visitors due to the hole down time and SEO problems you going have.

But is it possible sure. I have done it, that is where I am coming from the problems I spoke about is what I experienced. But it was fun and I learned a lot. But at the end of the day it was not a serious venture and my website never got indexed and I gave up.