Questions on hosting 2 sites

[chmeeha]

Hello I have just joined the forums and would like to pick a few brains about hosting a few sites here in my home. I have a very small consulting thing I do on the side. I have 2 sites that I want to move here and maybe more because I don't like the fact that I can't get on my current hosting server and do what I need to do to fix issues or make changes. I come from an MS background and no very little *nix. I would like to setup an IIS 6.0 web server for hosting 2 sites right now. Can someone point me in the right direction in using IIS as a hosting server. Also, if I decide to go through with this what would be the best way to have full control over the various domain email accounts?

Thanks for any help and direction.

[hostwire.com]

What operating system are you using? You can easily use Windows XP out the box to host on it. I would recommend Apache for Windows, MySQL for Windows and PHP. If you want to host from home you can do Dynamic DNS.

[Royalty Hosting]

If I understand, you want to host two websites on your own box? Were you on a shared hosting plan before? If yes why do you want to leave?

[GuardianServe]

Hi chmeeha,

I realise you have said that you have an MS background, but, Linux is worth considering, with little effort you can learn what is needed to give you a basic hosting platform, and with OS's like centOS (based on RedHat Enterprise Server | http://www.centos.org/ ) being freely distributed it could also save you some money and be more stable and secure.

It will be easier to start with Linux now than realise that MS was a bad choice later down the line.

Please don't take this as me bad mouthing Windows, because I'm not, windows and Linux both have there good and bad points, but for hosting and email, my choice would be Linux every time.

[mancweb]

It depends what you need to host, IF you need ASP, then unless you have big bucks to buy Chilli-ASP, you HAVE to use Windows.

If it's just standard html, then either will do the job.

I run Windows 2003 Server, as production, but with incoming via no-ip.org, and I host a number of development sites, makes it easier for clients to see where you are upto!

Give us a bit of help here, tell us what you need to do, then perhaps we can advise on which is the best way to do it.