After missing nearly all of the ALPB meeting but hearing just enough to get an idea in my head, i have installed and have running a website from home on a fairly beefy HP Pavilion Desktop PC.
I am still working on the web pages but the main page (index.html) is nearly finished.
This is an experiment at this point and i really don’t know if it will stay online for a long time or just go away in a few weeks. We will just have to see what happens.
Here is the url: http://thefreeproject.no-ip.org
Members please try it out and let me know how it works for you, good and bad comments welcomed. Thanks
Domain Points To Server
Well i went for broke and have pointed the domain http://www.bluebucketradio.com to the home webserver http://thefreeproject.no-ip.org. I have also downloaded all of the old web pages from the original website and added them to the server.
Later I want to try to mess with the virtual servers provided with WAMP.
Thanks
That page looks great, and it
That page looks great, and it did load very fast. I didn’t try your own domain to access it though.
I see it’s a template you edited, what program did you use to add all the stuff to it? I’ve used site templates I downloaded before, but my editor will do its own thing and wreck the template when it’s saved.
Good that you found out about this technology, WAMP and stuff, that could be a radio station out east 🙂
I had no issues with loading
I had no issues with loading up the page either. Unless you get gobs of traffic I don’t really see an issue with it. But if you were to get tons of folks at the same time things may slow down a bit for you.
Nice to see folks experimenting with FREE web hosting ideas to save money and help others who may want to try this in the future.
Just a couple of comments,
Just a couple of comments, having run my own web server, FTP server & streaming server for over 10 years.
Security is something you always need to be aware of. I’m not familiar with WAMP (I use Microsoft stuff), but you always have to consider the possibility of someone attempting to break into your computer (and/or network). FTP is a particular favorite – there are robots running around the Internet on the lookout for open ports (such as 21 for FTP). If they find them, they attempt to take advantage of them, with sometimes ill effects on the computer. I’ve had numerous attempts to break into my FTP site through brute force methods of password guessing (causing the machine to clog up), so much so that I eventually turned off FTP (by closing port 21 on my router) and only turned it on (opening the port) when someone wanted to upload a program to me (e-mailing ahead).
I’ve also had several IP addresses attempt to log into my stream multiple times, disconnecting after only a few seconds each time. Once I had over 10,000 hits in a 24 hour period and I had to use IP blocking features of my router to stop it. Moral – check your logs frequently.
Make sure you turn off all guest accounts, and use the proper file security for anonymous users (which you need for the web server).
There are many, many other considerations. I’m not attempting to dissuade you or anyone else from doing this, but you should do some research and know what you’re getting into before diving in whole hog.
There are lots of tricks if
There are lots of tricks if you take care to have a good FTP server, like setting it to use a non-standard port, secure FTP to make it harder to sniff the login info, and turning on anti-hammering. Any good server should allow all those things and more, so your field team can send their stories and shows right to the station from anywhere, but your server still stays safe.
I like this idea, a part 15 site by nature is going to be a low traffic site because of the small listener base, yet the website welcome mat needs to be there for people who are interested in reading more or contacting the station.
Outside hosting can be good for a station with a budget plan, but it does come with so many extra commerce features, HTML editors, plus some hosts try to sneak in ads on your error pages on top of that! Lots of things for commerce, and most seem to be geared to business, and if you don’t have a store, do you need to pay for all of the ‘free” business stuff they provide at $70-200 per year?
Some cheapie plans can dock you for processor use, don’t give enough processor and run databases slow, like with WordPress, or “unlimited!” hosts can shut your site down when you post your podcast with a feed, and several users go after it at the same time.
Most of the time they work fine though, and there’s something to be said for remote hosting, like if you have a natural disaster and your electricity or net is down. Very concerned webmasters would have a mirror site, home hosting as well as a free provider or cloud backup.
A constantly-on computer does take electricity, and you could lower that by using a netbook, a router for really small sites with flat pages, or PI Webserver for Raspberry PI, a tiny little box sitting in the corner of your room that consumes 10 watts or less.
I think the majority wouldn’t be bothered with running their own web server just yet, but it should be easy and fun for techies like the ones in part 1S radio.
TeamSpeak Server
I have also installed and have been testing a TeamSpeak server for a couple of weeks now.
Seems stable enough so i have opened it up to a forum where I am a moderator.
There is also a back up room on that server for the ALPB just in case.
Make a bookmark in TeamSpeak Client for this chat room if you like,
Label: StormSpotters
Address: thefreeproject.no-ip.org
Nickname : Your name obviously
Password: There is no password so leave this field blank.
Cheers
Noted
Exciting news, Barry of BlueBucket… KDX has written the info for later use…
The password should be : “none”… just kidding, but has anyone every done that?
I guess our home web sites are still working o.k.