Home based web hosting
Web Hosting - how it is important? How to choose hosting company? Does higher prices means better?
We can keep asking many questions, but choosing right web hosting is one of the most important decisions that you should take while developing website. The decision should be taken at initial stage of site development and for sure before the actual coding. If you build highly visited website with high bandwidth utilization, you should consider web hosting which gives you what you need. If your site provides online services and high availability is the main factor, then you should look for hosting with high uptime.
When you choose type of hosting you should have an idea how many visitors you may get, what your visitors will do. Then you can decide if you need shared server or virtual private server or dedicated server or server co-location. Of course all that increases the price you have to pay every month. If you need sitemap and RSS XML files to be generated automatically then you also need ability to execute schedule jobs. This will also jump you monthly price. And what about service level agreement (SLA) for uptime. How it is exactly calculated. If web server is up, but not responding, does this considered as downtime, probably not. What about scheduled maintenance windows - these for sure not counted as downtime. What about other websites that needs to be deployed or their code has changed and restart is required, does that counts as downtime - not. When web hosting promises 99% of uptime, in fact you will get much, much less. If you need to deploy your website changes which require restart, for how long should you wait until it is done? Most likely not with the same day or even week. What about system resources? Are they allocated only for you - not. On the same physical server running hundreds of other websites. Each of them consumes CPU and memory, but these are shared which means you get less, and more frustrated is when you really need them. And what about patch or special configuration your website requires? No, it cannot be installed since it may harmfully affect others. And if some patch was installed, but caused your website not working properly - well this is your problem! And what about moving you website from one hosting into another. Moving files is easy, but what about database? I can continue and bring more and more life examples, but this is not the purpose here.
The question is why people are not considering running websites from home? Today it is easy and convenient way and does not requires deep knowledge. Lets' make calculations how many visitors home internet connection can support. Lets' take DSL service of 3M with effective 1.5M download capabilities and 800K upload. Search friendly HTML pages should not be too big and lets' take average page site of 10K. To load such page with 800K upload speed (it will be download speed for visitors) should not take longer then 1 second. Lets' take as assumption that loading page takes 2 seconds. Simultaneously we can accept 800K/10K=80 concurrent visitors. For our calculations lets' take even lower numbers - 10 concurrent visitors every 2 seconds. It means in 1 minute we can receive up to 10*30=300 visitors, in 1 hour we can accept 300*60=18,000 visitors and daily 18,000*24=432k visitors. Impressive. If you reach that volume of daily visitors, you most likely can afford buying your own hosting company. The average websites receiving 10k a day, which means 10,000/(24*60) = 7 visitors a minute or visitor every 8 seconds - for home connections this is peace of cake. With constantly increasing internet connections speeds by ISPs, almost every year you can afford receiving more and more visitors.
Price is always a factor in choosing web hosts. Lets' do comparison here. Private server hosting with Java support will const you around $60 a month. Not private physical server - just private JVM and dedicated web server (Tomcat). In one year you will pay $720+taxes. How much cost you home based hosting? Hers is the answer:
- Buying dual CPU server - $500
- Buying buttery backup for 1 hour for 390W (the server can run up to 3 hours on it) - $100
- Home electricity a month - $10 (no more)
- Internet connection - $0 (you have it anyways)
- Static IP - $4 a month
In one year it comes to 500+100+((10+4)*12)=$768+taxes
At home you get - dedicate server with dedicated JVM and full control, running scheduled jobs and installing and configuring what your website needs. To get all that on external hosting you will pay $40-$50 a month. So, in 1 year you paid off all hardware expenses and starting next year you save almost $50 a month or $600 per year. Why not to invest that amount in developing more services and features on your website?
How to proceed and what to install:
- Install Java Runtime Environment which can be downloaded for free from java.sun.com. Just click on setup and you have it.
- If you need database then consider using MySQL. 99% of web hosting using it. It is free and easy to install. Just download from MySQL official website, double click on setup and continue with wizard.
- Web server - 99% of web hosting are using Tomcat, because it is free and easy. Just visit tomcat website download and install by clicking on setup and continue with the wizard.
- Mail server - yes you even can install mail server in 3 clicks. Try SurgeMail - it is free for 5 mailboxes and it has web mail access too.
All above software installed as windows services and started automatically. No need in manual intervention. Every time you reboot your PC everything is up and running and ready to receive visitors.
Now you have exact the same software that 99% of hosting companies are using and for the same reason - it is just free.
The last step is just to redirect your domain name to your home IP (contact your domain name register for details).
And of course, if you what to see real examples of home based hosting, please checkout following websites:
- This website itself: www.vicconsult.com
- www.montreallisting.ca - post and search free classified ads
- www.classifiedsottawa.ca - post and search free classified ads
- www.universelisting.com - post and search free classified ads
- www.itchapter.com
- biz.montreallisting.ca
- prudkov.montreallisting.ca
Yes all these 8 websites are running from single home based internet connection, 24 hours a day, every day. The 3 websites with classified ads considered heavy websites since people can upload and download pictures attached to ads and these sites getting hundreds new ads every day and thousands unique visitors.
If you are planning your website, then running it from home is not a problem. And nobody can damage or negatively affect stability and response time of your website, nobody can tell you what can you run and what kind of website content you are allowed. Running your website from home not just saves hundreds dollars a year, but also gives you flexibility to adjust your needs as quickly as possible.
