Weekend Project: Host Your Own Web Services
One of the great things about the web today is that you can choose from hundreds of services that will host your blogs, lifestreams, photos, videos, and music. One disadvantage of this, however, is that you typically have very little control over the actual experience. You can't, for example, make changes to themes on Wordpress.com or customize the way your pictures are shown on Flickr. However, thanks to a large number of open source projects, you could do all of this if you hosted your own blog, photo gallery, or mixtape service. In this post, we will show you how to do that and which services we like to run on our own domains.
A lot of you probably already host your own blogs and know how to register a domain and transfer files with FTP. If that's the case, feel free to skip right to the second page of this post to see our suggestions for other worthwhile packages to install on your server.
Tools and Information to Get Started
Obviously, to tackle these projects, you will need a few tools and some space on a server to host your projects.
Hosting
You will need some space on a server and your own domain name if you don't have one already. There are virtually hundreds of providers out there, all of varying quality and at lots of different price points, but most will give the a similar set of tools. Most hosting services will also set up a domain name for you.
Here are RWW, we host our site on MediaTemple, but their cheapest plan is $20 a month. Others, like GoDaddy, 1and1, or Dreamhost have plans that start at $4 or $5 a month. Obviously, to some degree, you get what you pay for, but to get started, almost every hosting service will do. Just make sure you sign up for a Linux package and not a Windows service, as most of the packages discussed below are meant to run on a Linux server.
For some more in-depth discussion about how hosting works, have a look at this article.
When you sign up with a host, also make sure your hosting package comes with PHP (a programming language almost all open source web projects use), MySQL (a database package to store your data), and the Apache web server.
Most hosting services will give you more than enough space and bandwidth for your personal site (some give you more than 100GB for less than $5 a month). But make sure you look at the details before you sign up. 1GB is not nearly enough disk space if you want to host a photo sharing site.
Moving Files Around: FTP client
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is the easiest method to get files from your desktop to your server. On Windows machines, we recommend Filezilla and SmartFTP (both are available for free). Our Mac users here at RWW like to use Fetch, Cyberduck, and transmit.
Some More Information You Will Need
You host will give you quite a lot of information about your account, but for our projects here, you really only need very little information: ftp username and password; database name, database username, database password. Every database has its own name - your host might give you only one database that all your programs can share (named something like db0212), or you can often add five or more separate databases. Every host does this differently, but usually they provide an easy to use user interface with all the relevant information and some also have very good tutorials.
Installation: Almost Always the Same
Most of the projects mentioned here have awesome tutorials that will get you through the install process. The first time you do this, it might be a bit intimidating, but after you have done it once, you will see that pretty much every installation follows the same pattern and asks for the same information (see above). Most of the time, you will have to edit a text document and enter your database information there. It's really just copy and paste. Some packages also just ask you for this information during the install process.
Note: if you plan on installing more than one software package on your server, make sure you set up a separate directory or sub-domain for each of them!
Comments
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i run on my server (shared hosting) wordpress and zenphoto for pictures. i inform me on scriptvote.com about the latest free php scripts.
Drupal is all right as a blogging platform, but it's not just for blogging. It's great if you want to build a static content based website that needs a robust CMS backend. You can use content in ways that just don't work with blog platforms like Wordpress or Blogger. You can also integrate a forum, blog, and much more with available modules.
You're right, though, it's a lot harder to get the hang of. But once you do, it's so much more powerful.
So, I use Wordpress for most of my blogs and I use Drupal if I'm creating a static content site (like my latest project: http://scificonlist.info). If you're looking to just blog, I would always recommend going with a self-hosted Wordpress installation. If you have aspirations beyond a simple blog, consider learning to use Drupal.
NanoBlogger - the ultimate in lightweight (if that's not a contradiction in terms) - as long as you're on a *nix host.
I'm running Wordpress for my blog and Elgg for a scientific collaboration site. Wordpress is awesome and so is Elgg, but the latter is quite hard to work with because it is a newer product and doesn't have a very comprehensive plugin ecosystem yet. Sweetcron looks good, so I'm going to try installing it as a weekend project.
I've heard good things about Wordpress mu, which is a multiuser, multiblog extension of Wordpress, and Buddypress, which is a social networking framework that runs on top of Wordpress mu. Also, Pligg is supposed to be good for Digg-like sites.
I would add SPIP, if you want to create an online commuity newspaper and PhpBB for a forum.
Cheers,
Osvaldo
Recommending FTP to your readers is evil, at least in its plain old non-encrypted version. With FTP all your data including passwords and usernames for databases, applications etc. are transferred in plain text -- easily readable for people eavesdropping your web connection, which is not too uncommon in non- or badly-secured wifi environments (WEP, WPA1).
I think it should be forbidden for professional hosting providers to even offer (plain) FTP accounts. SFTP/SSH is a far better alternative and supported by most mainstream FTP clients today.
@fabian - good point! sftp/ssh is definitely a better way to go, but not every low-end host will support it and for most users just trying to set up their first service, this degree of security is probably overkill.
Thanks for the usefull informations, I'm running Wordpress on a share Host and plan to run sweetcron, I also found out there are some theme for sweetcron around so the design can be customize. Gallery requires just to much from a share host, so I'm using Zendphoto instead.
@6: Sorry, I can't agree on that. Overkill? As I said, most FTP clients support SFTP as well so there's actually no difference in user experience. Just username/password as usual.
The only reason low-end hosts don't offer it, is that it'd cut their margins as encryption needs a little bit more resources on the server side.
I'm currently running my own Wordpress blog and have started playing with sweetcron but don't have templates finished. I am also looking into Gallery and Zenphoto as mentioned in the post and comments
Choosing a good web site provider and registrar is critical for a successful internet business.
I have come to the conclusion that I made the dreadful error of choosing a company because it had a 5 page ad in a popular computer magazine. I believe I have put my trust in a straw man. In my opinion 1and1, with CEO Oliver Mauss, is a horrible company and many customers have voiced a host of complaints on various blogs.
It should be a warning that when their phone is answered by a recording that tells you if you have gotten a notice from NCO, a collection agency, to press a certain number. If they are a reputable business, why do they have to send so many accounts to a collection agency?
Patrick Frey (Patterico) of the Los Angeles District Attorneys Office alleges his domain was high jacked and put up for auction on SEDO. SEDO is an associate company of 1and1.
Patterico: “I believe I’m facing massive incompetence, thievery, or very possibly a deliberate combination of the two. It feels like evil intent — but not for political reasons. It feels like cyber extortion — people going after the almighty dollar. Commenters have pointed out corporate ties between 1&1, which can’t seem to process my timely renewal, and Sedo/Domcollect, which stood to profit from 1&1’s failure. Usually, corporate incompetence does not earn the corporation money — but 1&1 and its related companies have found a way to make money off of their own slipshod procedures.”
Patterico was able to regain his domain.
Also Investigative journalist, Kelli Jack, has written 30 articles about this company and has a suit pending against them. Kelli alleges that 1and1 stole her domain name and sold it. Kelli states: "1and1 should be shut down." As of today Kelli is working with the Pennsylvania Attorney General.
I have filed complaints with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Trade Commission, Eastern Pennsylvania Better Business Bureau, ICANN, and others. I recommend everyone else having a problem consider doing the same.
The Washington DC, Pennsylvania Better Business Bureau has them listed as "Unsatisfactory" Read comments on the BBB why. Read some customer comments on Red Flag.
Warth Publishing Inc
from those hundreds of services that will host our blogs most are inneficient.
sorry for my negative
WordPress, MediaWiki, and phpBB is what I run on my hosting services...
Consider the Amazon cloud services.
Depending on the visitor volume and types of files you plan to host, total cost of ownership has the potential to be much, much lower than the hosts listed in this post.
http://www.rajiv.com/blog/2008/02/04/amazon-ec2/
@14: "power" cost of a smallest EC2 instance last time i checked is $72 per month, not inclusive bandwidth. Decent shared hosting plans cost about $10 a month. Tell me how the cost of running EC2 could be any cheaper than running a shared hosting account ?
BTW, does RWW run out of ideas to write about ?
For a really nice open-source CMS that's a lot more user friendly than drupal, check out http://concrete5.org
For blogs, I would recommand Dotclear http://dotclear.org/ A nice package, well developped, with a really active community wich is well structured. Automatic updates, automatic plugin installation....
for a good wiki package, DokuWiki http://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki, nice simple powerfull. No database needed...
This looks like a very good site. However I am stuck with Windows. I do not know how to use Linux (yet). Your site is very visitor friendly, and I like that. My WP account takes so long! Well, have yourselves a very fine new year.
PS. I saw you as I was digging something. Your link was there. ;)
DocuWiki is something I love for project management
yes I run wordpress for blogging and phpbb for a small forums of classmates.
Hi there,
How can I host Moodle? Very useful post, thanks!!
Flavia
Some other software which you might be interested in...
Horde (from http://horde.org) is a framework with a variety of modules, including a wiki (called wicked), comic viewer, ticket management software, standards compliant calendar, tasks list, and much more
Laconica (from http://laconi.ca) is the software behind http://identi.ca which is a federated twitter-like system, featuring groups, XMPP integration and a degree of SMS access.
@Flavia Ricci - Moodle is really straightforward to host. Download the source files to your computer, unpack them, and then transfer the files to your hosting company. I seem to recall that there's an install script and a README file in the sources. If you're still stuck, have a look at http://docs.moodle.org/en/Installing_Moodle - there are translations if English isn't your native language.
@Rosemary You don't need to use Linux, but most Windows Hosting Providers use IIS, which needs some tweaking to run PHP based scripts - most of the software described in this article use the PHP programming language. If you want to experiment you can use an Apache Webserver with PHP and MySQL - see for example AppServ from http://www.appservnetwork.com
@François Granger - DotClear looks nice - definitely will be looking at that - Thanks :)
Posted by: jon.spriggs.org.uk
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January 29, 2009 5:54 AM
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really good tips. but you 're look like a automotive mechanice... hehe.