Hosting your own blog

Many people had been asking me about me and how I hosted my blog. So they were eager to know. So here is how I learn, earn and host!

Tools needed:

1. A computer/server

2. A good internet connection with atleast 512kbps upload bandwidth.

3. Good hard drive.

4. Brain!

Now lets get started directly on starting your webserver.

The webserver:

If you are using windows I would highly recommend using IIS. Use windows 7 for best results as it has the latest version.

Now go to control panel -> Add remove programs -> Add/Remove windows features -> Select IIS and click ok. It will install IIS.

Once that is done, go to My Computer -> C: drive and you will see a folder inetpub. Inside that folder you will find a folder called wwwrooot.

All the files that you want to host e.g. html fies, php files or whatever you want the world to see, you will put them in this folder.

The domain:

go to http://no-ip.org and sign up for their DNS service. AFter you login, go to your account panel and you will see the current DNS you have made. Now we need to create one, so navigate through the site open the page where you can create a DNS. Once this page opens it will ask you for a DNS name, type in your desired DNS (domain) name, and type in your computer’s IP which you can get here.

Once this is done, your domain is also set. Ask someone to type in the domain name you registered and see if it works. Ofcourse it won’t if you are behind a firewall or if your port 80 is not open. One more thing to do while you are on the no-ip site, If you have a dynamic IP address get the little tool called DUC client. You can find it in the downloads section of their site.  Get that thing and install it on your computer as a system service. OPen the client and put in your no-ip account details and let it auto update the IP address automatically as it changes.

Now the portforwarding. Go here and select your router/modem model code to learn on how to forward your ports. you do not need this if you are not using any modem or router.

Install PHP:

for IIS we will use this, http://php.iis.net/

Go to the above link and install PHP!

Once that is done,  You will need a database server. Go to this site: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/

Download the community server! Install it! And you are done for now. The installation is pretty simple and you must LEARN to read some stuff. Everything cant be spoon-fed, if you really want to learn you will READ! Otherwise you can always leave a question in the comments and i will reply immediately!

Now comes the real stuff:

Do manage your databases you will need phpmyadmin.

Get the phpmyadmin package and extract its content your wwwroot folder as mentioned above.

Login to the phpmyadmin using the username: root and password: the password you set while you install mysql.

Create a database called “wordpress” or whatever name you want. THATS ALL!

Now go to wordpress.org download the wordpress package and extract it to the wwwroot folder. Once you are done, open your browser and go to this address http://localhost/<blog folder>  your blog folder name can be anything. Be sure it is something simple. Once you are in and on the wordpress page, the steps ahead of it are very self explaining. There is one step where it will ask you about the database.

Now it will ask “database name”, database username and password. Put in the database name as wordpress as we did in phpmyadmin, or whatever name you had selected. The username as root and password that you used. Other steps are pretty self explaining. If you find any difficulty feel free to leave a comment and i will reply to you immediately.

Once this is done, follow the instructions it says after installation. Once that is done go to the Site admin section and there you can see a variety of self explaining options. Click on them and learn what each option does. As you do this you will learn how simple it is. You can change themes, add plugins such as “google adsense”, statistics, image plugins…etc. There are millions of them!

I hope you like the post. It is not a very excellent post as it is done in a hurry. But again, for any questions please leave a comment, i will answer them immediately!

I have not gone much into deep, you must learn somethings on your own. This is not a very very difficult thing that you will be doing. I will be adding pictures and videos later as I get time to make them.

Thanking my readers

-Salil