Ok. How easy can it be done?

I have a Sympatico High Speed account with a router. Can that be used? What machine do I need to host my web site? (i.e. speed? Processor?). I want to use my PowerMac 6500/225 with my fleet of SCSI 7200 RPM drives for this duty.

I've always uploaded my pages to a web server like my school Board's or through iDirect and Bell. I want to have full control over everything.

Any lend some insight?

If you don't mind having your machine connected to the net at all times and you have OS 10.3 (or earlier but I don't know for sure) you can set up your own web server in a snap.

All you do is enable Personal Web Sharing in your System Preferences. (open System Preferences and click Sharing. Select Personal Web Sharing and click Start.)
Then if you want to share your files you place html docs, etc, in the Sites directory in your Home folder.

It's powered by Apache so the built in sharing is pretty reliable.

Cheers!

Last I heard, Bell doesn't allow servers on residential connections. You have to switch to a different dsl company that allows servers. Also, I think you need a static IP address, which is usually $5 extra per month from your ISP.

That said, I think having your own server would be very convenient. Unlimited POP accounts!

As for software, doesn't OS X come with Apache?

Yeah turning on web sharing basically starts your apache server. Your publshed pages can go into your Sites folder, or better, you should put them in /Library/WebServer/Documents, then you can eliminate the username from your urls. You might have to open port 80 on your router since it's likely turned off by default.

I'm not sure if you can hit your box from the outside or not. I know Bell and Rogers don't allow you to run a server, but I don't know if they block actual requests - they may.

A friend that I used to work with told me he managed to do it on Rogers using DynDNS.org, but I'm not sure how - when he explained it, it seemed kind of convoluted to me. The y only provide DNS services so I'm still not clear on how he actally got requests through Rogers to his machine.

FWIW