Can I Host a Website On My Computer? [Answered]
Yes you can host your website on your own computer.
The website hosted on your computer will be viewable by anyone on your computer.
However, it will not be available on the internet.
Still, you can make the website available to the whole world. But it is not worth the hustle you have to go through.
Instead, you can either host your website online for free or pay a small fee to a web host.
Stick around to learn why.
Requirements for Hosting Your Website On Your Computer
To host a website on your computer, you have to:
- setup software that will allow your computer to work like a server.
- keep your computer on all the time. If you turning off the computer, your website becomes unavailable and nobody can visit it.
- setup your home network so that your website domain can be mapped to your computer. Some internet service providers(ISP) can make it difficult to do this based on their setup.
Most ISP keep changing your IP address, instead of using a single IP address. In this situation, it will be hard to map your domain name. If you are lucky, your ISP can assign you a static IP address.
Alternatives To Hosting Your Website on Your Computer
Instead of hosting your website on your computer, host it on someone else server computer.
You will be able to avoid many consistency and performance issues.
There are numerous website hosts willing to host your website for free, for a monthly fee, or a yearly fee.
They do all the work of maintaining the servers and keeping it on. While you focus on
Can I host my website on my own Server
You can also create your own server and host your website there.
A quick check on server server prices shows that you will spend $500 to $20,000.
Unless you have a valid reason to get use a physical, use the alternative methods.
Conclusion
Once you embark on hosting your website on your computer, you will understand the amount of work website hosts do for a small fee.
They are able to do this because of the economies of scales. They do it for a lot of people and therefore, they are able to spread the cost to a all their customers.
If you are looking to host your website, you can check some free and paid online website hosting.
