Advice Needed: Hosting a Web Site Yourself

[Thraxen]

I wasn't sure if this should go here or in general hardware...

Anyway, I work for a somewhat small machine shop and the owner if the shop is about to spin off a separate business. He is apparently considering hosting the web site for the business on site and has asked me to research what this would involve.

So what exactly would we need to do this? What would be a good configuration? The business would be very specialized so I would only expect very light traffic. A static IP is obvious, but what about the hardware? Would we just need a server running some sort of firewall and then a web server behind that? Any recommended specs for the web server itself?

 

[xSauronx]

if its a small business and you expect light traffic, youll be better off buying a domain name and renting a server i would think. especially if you arent already familiar with how to get everything up and running.

 

[JDMnAR1]

In general, web servers aren't all that demanding on hardware, but for any kind of realistic recommendation you will need to provide more information. What kind of site is this going to be - ecommerce, relatively static information, forum software, any bells and whistles, etc? Will you run Windows/IIS, *nix/Apache, etc? Any database requirements? And so on...

 

[drebo]

A lot of people go into this type of decision thinking that it will actually be cheaper to host it themselves, not know all that goes into that decision.

I can safely say that it will be FAR cheaper and easier to have someone else host it.

 

[JackMDS]

Hardware wise the only thing important is dependebility (thta is why many people buy a Dell server rig). Power vise even a P-III 1GHz would do for simple Web Server.

software wise there is a lot of free simple applications. many use Microsoft IIS7, as well as variety of Server Appliances.

As mentioned above it is much better to start with a Hosting service, and take it from there. You can always move to your own hardware later on

The cost of electricity alone would be higher than a monthly fee of Hosting service.

 

[Thraxen]

I'd personally prefer that they did use a web host. The web site for the current business is indeed hosted externally. I'm not sure where this push to host on site for the new business is coming from. All I do know is they asked me to come up with some general details on what would be required.

As for the site itself, I think it would likely be mostly static content about the services offered, though I could see some sort of forum being used down the road. Our current network and internal web site is running in a Windows Server 2003 environment, so I'm assuming that Windows Server would likely be used in the new business as well.