looking to host my own website or buy from host provider

I am a high school teacher that loves to use technology in the classroom.
I have built a webpage for my class but dont want it to go through the school due to the avaialbity to update the site takes too long and too much red tape. I just took a graduate class for computer structures and my professor suggested that I make my own hosting server. I am looking to set one up but dont know where to begin. In the meantime I dont mind buying from a host provider. I have already looked into hosts and found what I was looking for. I wanted to know what directions I could take when building my own web server.

- Research for one, maybe i could help.


- Lots and lots of research. Do you have the facilities? (e.g. backup systems?) Why not just order a server? Save yourself alot of time especially if it's a managed server.

I will be the one managing the system if I were to place it on the web. Right now I know enough to get myself into alot of trouble and that is about it. that is why I was looking in where to start the research on like what type of OS to run on it like windows or linixs. In the meantime while I am getting my site up and running I just buy one for now until I have one built.

as for the server I dont have that much funds just enough for a decent host provider.

For a few $s or £s you could have web hosting.

But as for Operating Systems it all depends on the type of languages you are going to use. In my experience i would always go for Linux. The main reason is because i always code in PHP and use Mysql for databses. Another reason is that i am just use to using linux servers.

It all depends on the amount of bandwidth you expect to use within a month also. As you may know you will need a good connection speed for the website, depending on the amount of hits your website gets.

I dont expect that much traffic besides myself and about 100 students that teach each semester. I have a cable modem that would be used for the home site.

How much space will the website take? Maximum? How many visitors expected per month?

well space right now is not that much maybe about 10 gigs worth most of it is videos that i use during class that I put there so i can access them anywhere.

as for the vitors like i said would be student use and my personal use. It is hard to say depending on how extensive I make the students use the site. I would like to say just go to the website to get homework and then i can check to see who loged in and what pages they went to. that would be ideal and yet a few years away that I realize. right now with students the way they have been in the past I would say about 500 hits per month to start off with would be great.

Ok, 10GB space is alot when web space is concerned.

What type of cable connection are you on?

2Mbit?

I am on a cable that is provided by road runner. AS far as the connection right now I would sucpect about a T1 connection.

Then you should be fine. I actually found a nice webpage long time ago about building servers. Let me see if i can find it for you.

thanks alot

Well im back, i couldnt find the original website.

{I wasnt searching all this time by the way}

http://www.pcmech.com/show/network/690/

I did a google search: How to build a web server

Very few ISP's and/or cable providers allow this type of traffic on their connections. You may want to confirm/deny this before you proceed in this fashion.