[RESOLVED] Hosting my own website

So I have a couple questions about this subject. From the other posts I've read I gather that I need to use a Dynamic DNS if I don't want to buy a static ip. I want to put Apache on my old computer and put another NIC on it to make it a proxy server. This should be OK with any ISP if it is only for personal use and experimenting, right?

If I did start to get traffic on this website that I am hosting at home then what would I need to do or what service would I have to get from my ISP to make this copacetic with them?

its completley dependant on your ISP your best of contacting them. They will know more than anyone will do here!

Pino

OK, I'll give them a call. I read in a wrox xhtml book that it is more expensive to host your own website than to just pay for a yearly subscription to a webhosting service. I was mostly just curious about how much more expensive it was. Thanks, I'll post the result of contacting them later.

OK, so I have Comcast and I called them and told them what I wanted to do and they said that it would be fine even to host a serious website from my home computer. I'm not sure that they really knew what I meant though. I don't think the operator I talked to was technical and they didn't have anyone technical.

You should be alrite tho, just make sure you write down the time/date and name of the person you spoke to then youre backed up!

There are a few things you should consider before embarking on it.

• The Volume of Traffic - this is an important factor to consider. Most broadband ISP's only give you an upstream rate of 256kbps. At most this would give a single user a maximum download rate from your site of 30kb/sec. This will of course reduce with the number of people using your site and of course your own usage of the broadband.
  
  If you underestimate your usage requirements, you may find your Internet connection become extremely slow and access times to your site likewise. If you want an idea of how fast it will be, take a look here:
  
  http://adam.codedv.com/mavericks/
  
  I have this hosted off my own server via my broadband ADSL connection with a 256kbps upstream and 2mpbs downstream. I have had to install a reverse proxy which throttles the connection speed to prevent web users stealing all my upstream.
  
  With a managed host, you will find that the download speeds are a lot faster and your site will be able to support many users. However, poorly set-up shared hosting can make your site very slow too, so it is worth finding a reliable host.
• Security - if you are hosting your own site, you are responsible for security. A poorly written server side script or an exploit in the Operating System or web server software, could give an attacker access to your personal files.
  
  With managed hosting solutions, the security side of things is taken care of for you, with the server being kept fully patched and updated and any looses of data due to attacks or hardware failure is taken care of by them.

You didn't say what kind of site you plan to host. Setting up your own server makes publishing files for download very easy and provides a quick dirty method when you don't want to spend the time uploading to ftp servers, etc.

If you want a production website however and will be expecting a lot of visitors, do not go down this route, unless you don't mind buying a separate dedicated server and Internet connection to host it.

Thanks, that was very insightful. I just wanted to host my own website to learn how it is done. I have a couple of business websites that I run using a paid web host right now. I just thought that I could run a website that only family and friends would go to on my own personal server. Something with pictures and what not. My ISP has 8mpbs down and 2mpbs up, so not too shabby. I am concerned about security though. I think I'll need to get some "For Dummies" books to get me started. I think it will take me a few months to learn enough to be comfortable with doing this, so this is just the start of my educational journey. Thanks again for the direction.