Home Webserver Guide

I recently set up my home server again. I haven’t had it fully functional in quite some time as I’ve playing around with different software packages. This time around I decided to use The Uniform Server as my core and I have been very impressed. I collected a good list of links to the articles I followed to get everything running. Basically this is how it went in a step-by-step fashion:

• Signed up for a free DynDNS account and domain
• Bought an easy to remember dot com domain name at GoDaddy
• Forwarded my GoDaddy domain to my DynDNS domain
• Got my Windows XP server machine ready for use
• Assigned a static IP address to my XP machine on my home network
• Forwarded the right ports on my router to my webserver
• Opened up the right ports on my XP machine’s firewall
• Downloaded and installed DynDNS’s dynamic IP updater client
• Setup and secured The Uniform Server software to host my site
• Completed database setup and WordPress install for blogging

In addition to this, I wanted some advanced functionality. I set up Windows remote desktop so I can access the server from anywhere I have an internet connection. To secure this feature, I also installed OpenSSH. I didn’t realize until later that the SSH software also allowed me to run a secured FTP server for file transfers between machines. Sweet! For those interested, here are the articles I used to accomplish all this:

http://tinyurl.com/27l9t6 (Domain Name)

http://tinyurl.com/5mohge (Router/Firewall)

http://tinyurl.com/av55ub (The Uniform Server)

http://tinyurl.com/a9cnt (WordPress)

http://tinyurl.com/6y6ym (Remote Desktop)

http://tinyurl.com/d67p63 (OpenSSH Setup)

http://tinyurl.com/bgr5f (OpenSSH SFTP)