Creating a Desktop Server and Forums

[dreamerd]

Ok so My Project for this upcomming Year is to Turn one of my Desktop Computers into a Server. Is there a free/cheap way of doing this.

Also I was wondering what Knowledge I would need to create a Forum sorta like this. I dont want to use free forums cause I wanna create My own. I want to run the forums off of the Desktop Computer/server once I get that up and running.

Any Suggestions on what I should start learning to go about and create the forums and Server.

[DigiRev]

Well, first, you'll need a decent computer to run the server. Even if you're just running a forum like this, it will need to be pretty fast, and have a lot of RAM/CPU power. Also a high speed connection. Something like Cable/DSL would not hold up well with a high server load. You may want to look into dedicated OC or T1/T3 connections.

Then, you'll need a web server. There's Apache. It's free, and widely used. Apache Friends XAMPP is free and comes with PHP, MySQL, Apache, And FileZilla FTP service in one, easy to install, setup file.

If you want to make your own forum, I would suggest learning PHP. Or maybe ASP, it's your choice. Either way, you need to learn a server-side scripting language, and gain experience in databases like MySQL. Most forums use PHP, so I would go with that one.

And of course you'll have to have a lot of experience with HTML and possibly CSS.

[Al42]

Well, first, you'll need a decent computer to run the server. Even if you're just running a forum like this, it will need to be pretty fast, and have a lot of RAM/CPU power.

I've run Web servers on CPUs running at 1 GHz or a little less, and that's not considered fast these days, with as little as 500 MB of RAM.

Also a high speed connection. Something like Cable/DSL would not hold up well with a high server load. You may want to look into dedicated OC or T1/T3 connections.

I run an audio server, which takes a lot more bandwidth than a forum, on a cable connection. Web servers are "grab and sit" - the client grabs a page, then disconnects from the server, so the constant load is pretty low. The bandwidth will normally just limit how fast a user can load a page.

[DigiRev]

I've run Web servers on CPUs running at 1 GHz or a little less, and that's not considered fast these days, with as little as 500 MB of RAM.

I have too. And they don't stand up very well under a high server load. And I'm not just talking about a standard webpage or website.

I run an audio server, which takes a lot more bandwidth than a forum, on a cable connection. Web servers are "grab and sit" - the client grabs a page, then disconnects from the server, so the constant load is pretty low. The bandwidth will normally just limit how fast a user can load a page.

I know how the HTTP protocol works.

I'm curious as to what kind of audio server you run. Streaming audio? MP3?

A popular streaming audio site would NOT hold up on a cable connection.

The average throughput (upstream) of a cable connection is usually around 30-50KBps. And that's not considering how far away you are from whoever is downloading the audio.

That's about 1KB/s for every 30-50 users.

That just wouldn't work. Even with low bitrate MP3s.

[Al42]

I'm curious as to what kind of audio server you run. Streaming audio? MP3?

Streaming from a police scanner. 8-16k bandwidth. That still takes more total bandwidth than a web page.