Hello fellow Geeks and Experts.
I have been using Opensuse 11.0 (Gnome desktop) , since it was released back in October 2008. It has been very user friendly.
I was wondering if I can use this desktop to host a simple website, that would have a blog and couple pages.
Is this a good idea at all. Since this is a personal website, and I’d be updating it not so often, I didn’t want to pay a commercial hosting service.
Any thoughts/ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks
Srinivas:nerd:
yup you can do it, install LAMP pattern in YaST, configure apache and put your files in /srv/www/htdocs. Make sure to open firewall ports too. Also make sure to enable apache to start on bootup, just in case you need to reboot the machine. And if you want, get a public domain name from DynDNS or some such service. In such case, you need to install ddclient and configure it to pass the IP over to DynDNS (if it’s dynamic)
Or just sign up with any of those free blog sites (but your viewers will have to put up with ads) out there. Then you won’t have to worry keeping your site up all the time, or if your blog gets slashdotted and causes your ISP connection to melt down.
I appreciate your replies! 
I have a blog on a “blog site”, they have limited look and feel options (no flexibility to use custom scripting). They don’t have option for running ads. Running ads is strictly prohibited (at least on this blog site).
I didn’t understand what you said : or if your blog gets slashdotted and causes your ISP connection to melt down. 
Can you please elaborate…
he meant that if your blog becomes popular (eg, someone mentions it on the Slashdot site), it could fill up your pipes 
Did you mean, my blog would become slow because of large number of hits ? This makes sense, as I would get a limited bandwidth with a public blog site. 
BTW, from your solution, it looks like there are enough number of configuration steps to go online from your desktop :\
Yes
BTW, from your solution, it looks like there are enough number of configuration steps to go online from your desktop :\
Depends…
You have to configure apache no matter what (or another web server if you prefer, something like lighttpd). Once that is done, and it really isn’t that difficult, you are almost done. If you just intend to use plain HTML files for your site, just throw them in /srv/www/htdocs or if you want, enable in apache the user directory (I think that’s on by default but you may need to change a few things if you need php support), then you can place them in /home/username/public_html
Hint: I prefer using virtual servers in apache
After that, register a domain name (I use one from DynDNS) and install ddclient with zypper or yast. Configure it in /etc/ddclient.conf, start it with rcddclient start, and add it to the boot process with chkconfig -a ddclient
Now, if you intend of hooking up a DB backend to your site, it’ll involve a bit more work
That’s my own private site ran from a desktop machine http://neutrino.dynalias.net:8080
I must admire your depth of knowledge :idea:! To be honest, at a later point I would hook this site to backend mySQL database. In the past I read, Apache is just a web server, it won’t support Persistence implementation (like EJB, JDBC, Hibernate, etc).
Is this true.
In that case, I may have to go for JBoss may be…
Please enlighten this puzzled penguin… 
Virtual server meaning, more than one apache instance on single hardware ? , Now why would I need more than one Apache instance…
Thanks a lot!
Hooking up a DB involves little adjustments to the web server itself. Like enabling/adding php (or another scripting language) support like installing php apache and php mysql/pgsql/etc packages from yast. Some apache config files do not enable php support by default, as is the case with the mod_userdir.conf apache file, so you’ll have to add a line to it to load the php module
As for apache itself, there are different subprojects of it, like Tomcat which supports JDBC and Apache Derby too which actually is a DB itself written in Java with a very small footprint. Apache/Tomcat do support Hibernate but with plugins (iirc) DBCP/Hibernate - Commons Wiki
Please enlighten this puzzled penguin…
Virtual server meaning, more than one apache instance on single hardware ? , Now why would I need more than one Apache instance…
Thanks a lot!
No, it means that you can run different sites under one Apache instance. For each site, you create a virtual server file with settings in it for that site and apache serves all of them at the same time. Simply put, you can have for example
http://mysite1.org
http://mysite2.net
http://mysite3.edu
all running under one apache instance. Virtual server config files are put in /etc/apache2/vhosts.d and there’s also a sample file that can get you started
I have LAMP running on my system. I hosted my website for a few weeks, but then I cam to know that GoDaddy (From where I purchased my domain) had also given me 10gb of web hosting service free when I purchased the domain from them. So it cost me $5 (Indian Rs. 300) for getting a domain name and web space of 10gb for one year. So I think it is cheap… I was also not interested in shelling out extra money for hosting my website as I am just learning web site designing. So it was a blessing for me :).
The biggest drawback of hosting your website on your own system is that you will have to keep your system running 24/7. Other than that there was not any other problem. And yes, if you are having a dynamic IP you need to point it to your domain whenever you reboot. But I will check what microchip8 said about DynDns. It will be a blessing for me…
Just for your information, if you own a domain name, then you can use Google Applications for free also here is the link if you are intrested: Google Apps. The advantage is you can create upto 50 email ids with any_user@yourdomain.com for free…