Creating a Desktop Server and Forums

[slayer101]

Ok so My Project for this upcomming Year is to Turn one of my Desktop Computers into a Server. Is there a free/cheap way of doing this.

Also I was wondering what Knowledge I would need to create a Forum sorta like this. I dont want to use free forums cause I wanna create My own. I want to run the forums off of the Desktop Computer/server once I get that up and running.

Any Suggestions on what I should start learning to go about and create the forums and Server.

[carsey]

You would have to have your desktop computer running 24-7 as it would require files to run from the server.

[slayer101]

Thats no Problem

[carsey]

Heres 1 i found on gooogle.

http://userful.com/download/dl?p=ds

Its a free trial.

Dont know how good it is as I have never used it

[slayer101]

Is there any you tried that work well.

[carsey]

Nope, I don't really need a server.

Maybe some other guys will have knowledge on the topic

[slayer101]

Thank you for your Help Carsey.

[carsey]

As for the forum sort of things.

This forum is by V-Bulletin. You have to pay for it. Check the prices out here:http://www.vbulletin.com/order/

Hope this helps

[slayer101]

Im gonna download the Desktop Server and try that. For the Forum I wanna create one from scratch. So I can use it as my project for College :)

[ebackhus]

I have a webserver running Windows XP Pro as the OS and Apache2Triad runs the webserver software. It combines Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, and a few other languages into a simple to use interface. Best of all it's free! I tried running Linux on it but it wouldn't mount the HDD that I store the webdocs on...

[carsey]

Look at some forums. They can offer skins and all sorts of add-ons. I wouldnt know where to start making one from scratch

[slayer101]

Ill check out Apache2Triad 2 Yeah for my College Project I have to create a Forum from Scratch. Im glad I have until Next year to finish it. :)

Are there any particular Languages that go good with Forums

[ITLogic()]

Hello Slayer that's a pretty ambitious project, but well worth it. If you are strating from complete scratch, only hardware, then you can do option 1 like I did.

Option 1:

Check out www.freebsd.org. This is a great BSD flavor of Unix. It's not the easiest thing to master, but if you have a year and some dedication, you can do it. Did I mention it's free? Do a google search on "FreeBSD server setup" or something like that. I used FreeBSD 5.3, which is an older version now, and found a great article that made the setup surprisingly easy. In fact, many will tell you how to set up Apache at the same time.

If you go this route, you will probably want to use PHP as your scripting language and use MySQL as your backend database. Apache, PHP and MySQL are what makes up ApacheTriad, so just install that and you will get the whole thing.

Option 2:

If you are already running XP Professional by chance, you can go under Add/Remove programs in your control panel. You will see a button for add new Windows components (or something like that). In there you can enable IIS. That is Windows web server, the only problem is that you are limited to 10 simultaneous connections. If this is a school project and not some production project, that might not be a problem. If you go this route, I would use ASP as your scripting laguage, or ASP.net, and an Access database. If you do plan on making a production forum, then you will probably want to use SQL Server instead of Access. The only problem with that is that it's no longer free. IIS is built into Windows XP, asn ASP is built into IIS so that would not be a problem, but if you don't have Access or SQL Server then you will have to fork out some cash.

Option 3:

If you already have XP Home or Professional, then do the ApacheTriad thing for Windows. Again free! wooo hooo

A few other thing you might have to consider with setting up a server from your home. Whomever your ISP is might block port 80 in order to deter you from doing such a thing. Port 80 is used for HTTP request, which is what you need to communicate from your server to the users browser. I had this problem with Cox Communications when I was setting one up for testing. The way around that is to change the settings in your server to accept requests from a different port, like 8080. Or, if you have a firewall or router, you can leave port 80 as the default on the server and forward any incoming traffic on another port, like 8080, to port 80. So the URL to your server will be something like http:\\my.ip.add.ress:8080

Whew this is getting to be alot of typing. Maybe I should write this as an article for the forum.

Another problem you will run into, unless you have a static IP address with your ISP. In most cases a normal residential accound with any ISP uses a dynamic IP address. This means that there is some time frame and once that time has elapsed, the ISP changes your IP address automatically. It is the same as if you still use dial-up. Everytime you dial in, you grab whatever IP is available in the pool of IP addresses owned by your ISP. Therefore, the address is almost never the same. What does this mean you ask? It means that at one particulat moment the URL http://my.ip.add.ress:8080 finds your server, the next moment it does not and you get a page not found error. That is because your address was changed at the ISP. The new URL might be http://what.the.f*.*k:8080.

The solution to this is to go to http://www.zoneedit.com/doc/dynamic.html. Zone Edit will monitor your IP address. I will admit that I'm not completely sure how it works, but it keeps a record of your current IP address and whenever it changes, the record is changed to match it. You might want to read the documentation on the site, but it basically turns your dynamic address into a static address (meaning it doesn't change). Finally, the best news of all... that's free too! woooo hoooo again!

So in summary, you can set up a webserver with either option 1, 2 or 3 for absolutely free. Well, of course, that is assuming you already have Microsoft Access or SQL Server for option 2.

Now, once you have everything running and your project is due then you put your new super dooper forum in production and Google approaches you like YouTube and wants to buy your creation for 2 BILLION dollars. Don't forget ITLogic() was there in the beginning! lol good luck

P.S. Don't you dare go to www.bitlord.com and search for bit torrents at www.isohunt.com. You might find some overpriced software there that you could download for free and use without a license for educational purposes. Now matter how convienient it might seem to do so, as well as cost effective, it is illegal, illegal, illegal! If your teacher finds out it would be an instant "F" and the FBI would swarm your house with Blackhawk helicopters and SWAT team tactics to smoke you out of your house.

[ITLogic()]

Oh by the way. If the intention is to only set up an intranet on your home network or you only intend on using your computer and server locally (localhost) and you will not need to trasmit your forum accross the internet, then the port 80 and dynamic IP address thing does not apply to your situation.

[slayer101]

time to get started with option 1 thank you

[slayer101]

Ill be sure to keep you in mind. :)