This website is hosted on my home server. The interesting thing about this setup is that it only costs me $5 a year to keep this website up. Most website packages, even extremely simple packages will cost several dollars a month totaling around $30 a year.
For a website host that boasts more advanced features such as aspx active server scripts, the cost can double.
All I am paying for is the domain name through 1&1 hosting. This service provides me with just the domain name itself (the jeffheidel.com). They then offer the option or forwarding it to another webhost.
It might now be advantageous to discuss my home setup. My website is hosted off a Pentium III computer in my closet. This computer requires only 100W of power and remains up 24/7. Note that the electrical cost of this server to remain up at all times equals around $30 a year anyway; however, I have other uses for this server as well and it has more functionality than an equally priced webhost.
This server has a static IP on the network. My router, running custom DD-WRT firmware, has port 80, the http web port, forwarded to my server's static IP.
This setup allows anybody to access the site by typing in my IP address. Unfortunately, this IP address is dynamic meaning that every day, the IP is changed by my internet service provider. This means that I cannot simply forward the domain to an IP address. In order to map the domain to the IP, I decided to use Freedns.afraid.org. This is a free service that allows for DNS redirection.
Here is how this works: I configure the domain to use FreeDNS's domain name
servers. This means that when somebody types in jeffheidel.com, the browser will
discover that it is linked to FreeDNS and check their nameservers for the IP. My
router's DD-WRT software is set to update FreeDNS's name server whenever the IP
changes. The result is a website that is always up despite a randomly changing
IP address. This website also has all the functionality of a direct IP address;
applications that require internet IPs such as games over the internet can now
be accessed by merely typing in jeffheidel.com instead of referencing the IP.
This means that the entire process is easier for my end users. It is because of this process that you are able to see this page right now.
Update: 2/2/2010
I had a little bit of free time today, so I decided that I would play around
with the MX settings in order to get my mail address to be an @jeffheidel.com
address. I managed to reroute the MX settings in the FreeDNS service to
Google
apps' server. Google Apps is a domain applications management service; they
offer a free very basic edition that was perfect for what I needed to do. This
allows me to essentially host my own variant of Gmail which functions on my
domain but still remains on the Google servers. It can be accessed at
http://mail.jeffheidel.com, however,
one needs an account to access it. I can now be reached via email at
<anything>@jeffheidel.com. I also made my best friend an @jeffheidel.com account
(because of the obvious humor involved in this situation) that redirects email
to his existing account. If you want an account for any reason, feel free to let
me know by sending an email to
iwantanaccount@jeffheidel.com :-) |
1&1's modified DNS settings
freedns.afraid.org's DNS settings
My router's DDNS configuration page.
http://mail.jeffheidel.com, an MX
re-route to Google Apps |