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Assumptions:

You have a D-Link router that supports saving information to syslog.

You have a SuSE  Linux server or you are familiar with configuration locations on your distro. It is easy just search for syslog and your distro name. I didn’t know either.

Step 1: Open up /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf in an editor. Most web sites refer to syslog-ng.conf.in or something like that. They seem to be out of date. There is only syslog-ng.conf

Uncomment the line

#udp(ip(“0.0.0.0″) port(514));

to

udp(ip(“0.0.0.0″) port(514));

Save the file and quit.

Step 2: Restart the syslog

rcsyslog restart

Step 3: Go to your DLink routers admin page. I assume you know how to get there. On my router the tab name is Tools and then click on SYSLOG. Check “Enable logging to syslog”. and then  type the IP address of the SuSE box there. Click the “Save Settings” button at the top.

Step 4: A few minutes later check the syslog messages on the server. You can get there easily by opening up yast2 and going to Miscellaneous -> System log. Or just tail /var/log/messages.

Do not open that port on your router.

This setup is required to get the DNS queries for our domain to reach the DNS servers at zoneedit for name resolution.

Log-in to your 1 & 1 control panel. Click on the package link. Click on the manage domain option.

Select the domain name (check mark) and then click on the down arrow next to DNS and select “Edit DNS settings”. Set the general settings to DNS under domain data. For basic DNS settings, select “My name server”. In the advanced DNS settings type one of the name of the DNS server provided by zoneedit from our previous step in the primary name server option. Select “My secondary name server” for secondary name server option. Now enter the name of second DNS server name provided by zoneedit in the 1st secondary name server box. Leave 2nd and 3rd secondary name server names blank.

Click OK. It will take a while to propagate this setting. We will continue with other settings while this is being updated. When the update is complete, the status will show as ready in the domain overview page of the administration tab.

Computers on the Internet connect to each other using IP address. For someone else’s computer to connect to your server, that computer need to know the IP address of your server. Your domain name is usually associated with one IP address and that IP address can be the IP address of your server. DNS servers keep the information of what is the IP address of a domain name. Usually domain registrar allows you to specify a different DNS server than their own DNS server for your domain name.

We will use zoneedit as our DNS service. As of this writing, it is free for the first 5 domains. Signup here for free. Make sure to read and understand the terms and conditions.

Setup for one domain is called a zone at zoneedit. Log-in and add a zone. Once you add zone with your domain name, zoneedit will give you two name servers and their IP addresses. 1 & 1 accepts only the names. So, note them down. Use a password with upper and lower case letters and a few numbers in between. Avoid special characters because we will be using this password to update the information dynamically. Note down the password.

Click on the name of the zone (domain name). Click on Aliases (CNAME). In the box titled “Alias” type “www” and the box titled “Actual Name” type your domain name. The whole line should read like www is another name for your-domain-name. Click the “Add New Alias” button to create the alias. This will help others access our server by typing http://www.your-domain.ext.

If you have a static IP address, go ahead and specify the IP address under IP Addresses (A). If not we are ready for updating the IP address dynamically when ready with server setup.

I use 1 & 1 as my domain registrar for this website. One of the reasons why I use 1 & 1 is, they have free private registrations. This means that you can buy a domain name without exposing your personal information like name, address, phone number etc. Depending on what type of website you are planning to create, you may want to keep your registration private. For example, some people blog about their work without telling who they are.

Let us say you want a domain with your name your-name.com. You can check the availablity of the domain name here.

The check comes back with available domain names and suggestions. Choose one or search more. When ready click continue which gives you the purchase options.

Since we are planning to host our site from home, select the Instant Domain option which costs only the yearly registration fee. That fee depends on the extension you selected. Lowest is $8.99 but first year may be cheaper.

Once you sign-up and pay, the domain name is yours for the period of registration. If you do not want to loose the domain name because you forgot to renew, you can setup automatic renewal. You get renewal notices from 1 & 1 by email as well.

It can take up to 48 hours before you can start using the domain name. But in the mean time you can start working on other steps.

Disclaimer: Use this guide at your own risk. The setup is based on my own expertise and experience and your mileage may vary or may even not work for you.

The idea of this guide is to show you a way to host your own website from your home. This may not be the cheapest setup but should be close. The hosting will be on a Linux server specifically on openSUSE distribution. If you are completely new to computers or do not want to bother with black or green screens with lot of text, a better option is find a cheap hosting solution.

This cheap solution requires some expertise on computer setup and confidence in figuring out simple computer settings. Almost all the pieces are free open source components. The only pieces I identified as where you need to pay are for the domain name which is less than $10 a year as of this writing and for the server hardware. I assume you already have an Internet connection and will not paying anything extra for this setup.

I host this website on a server at home. It took a lot of research and effort to get this setup working. I thought I would share the knowledge I gained so that someone else will benefit. I assume that you are not overwhelmed by Linux and its text based configurations. If you use any other Linux distribution than openSUSE, you may have to lookup where the configuration files are and such. This is one gripe I have against the whole Linux ecosystem. They should at the least standardize on locations of executables and configuration files.

1. You need a broadband Internet connection. You do not want to host it on a dial up connection even though technically you can do it. Serving up anything other than text will be too taxing on a dial up upload speed. Here is the guide to choosing your connection. It also will tell you how to setup your router (D-Link) for handling web requests from outside.
2. Get a domain name from a domain registrar that allows you to host your website on your own servers. I use 1& 1 as my domain registrar. I will be using the control panel on the 1&1 admin web site to explain registrar related steps. Here is how to get a domain name using 1 & 1.
3. Get a free account at a DNS service like zoneedit or everydns. I will start with zoneedit examples and may add everydns examples later. Here is how to setup the DNS service at zoneedit. Here is how you set the DNS for your domain to Zoneedit. If you have a Cable or most DSL connections (no static IP address) you will need a way to update the DNS lookup whenever your ISP changes your IP address. We will ddclient in our example.
4. You need a computer that can run Linux. Since I picked up openSUSE after some research, this guide will use openSUSE as the Linux distribution of choice. I am not a Linux expert and my experience is that different distributions work differently and have file and configurations located in different places. I will try to use the cheapest possible configurations for this guide. For a cheap hardware search Google for “cheap bare bones PC”. I got links for PC’s that are cheaper than $200. They probably won’t have any OS installed on it and is perfect for our setup. Not having an OS installed on it and not having a support other than just the warranties makes the hardware cheap. I suggest that you use a mirroring RAID solution using Linux. I do have this setup but don’t know how it works in case of failure. Keep at least 2 hard disks in the mirror RAID like RAID 1. To setup RAID1 you need at least 2 hard drives and make sure the bare bones PC has slots for at least two hard drives.
5. Get a router that can forward port traffic to a computer in the home network. Right now I have a D-Llink router and here is the guide to using D-Link router interface.
6. How to setup ddclient to update your domain IP at zonedit.com. Coming soon…
7. How to install and configure a Linux server for web hosting part 1. Coming soon…
8. How to configure Apache web server for hosting one or more web sites. Coming soon…
9. How to configure MySQL for hosting WordPress blog on your website. Coming soon…
10. A google applications account for email, calendar and contacts. Coming soon…
11. Setting up google adsense for monetizing traffic to your website. There is no guarantee that you will make money from the website. I did it because it was easy and free to setup. Coming soon…