How to Host a Web Site from Your Computer

Posted on September 11, 2006
Filed Under How To, Software, Web Hosting | 49 Comments

In the following article I am going to show you how to host a web site from your own computer. Why would you want to do this you might ask? Well for one, it’s free. It’s also great for hosting small web sites or sharing large files with friends. However, if you are planning on running a site with high traffic I would not recommend this. Just follow these simple steps and you will have your own web server up and running in no time.

Step 1: Go to http://www.snapfiles.com/get/hfs.html and download HFS (Http File Server).

Step 2: Double-click the hfs.exe file that you downloaded. If you have Windows Firewall enabled you will be prompted with a security warning. Click “Unblock” to allow HFS to pass through the firewall.

Step 3: This is the tricky part. The default port that HFS uses is port 80. If your ISP blocks port 80 then you will need to change it to something else. To change it you must turn HFS off. You can do so by clicking the “On” button in the upper left corner. When you are done, turn it back on. If you are behind a router or firewall then you will have to set up port forwarding. If you need help with this go to http://www.portforward.com/. Here you can choose the type of router you have and then choose the program you want to set up port forwarding for such as Http File Server-HFS. It will walk you through the exact steps to set up forwarding.

Step 4: Now you can test your settings to see if they work. Go to the menu and click “Self Test”. If it is successful then your settings are correct. You should now be able to point your web browser to your IP address to see files or pages you are sharing.

Step 5: Now I’m going to tell you how to assign a domain name for your web site. Since you don’t have a DNS server running on your computer, you will need to get DNS service from somewhere else. To do this, we are going to use a service called DynDNS. DynDNS offers a variety of subdomain names to use for free for your website. Go to https://www.dyndns.com/account/entrance/ to create a DynDNS account. Login with the account you have created and click on the services button. If you have a dynamic IP address that changes, click on “Dynamic DNS” and then “Add Dynamic DNS“. Choose a subdomain and domain name. Then add the host. Now you have a domain name that you can use and give out instead of your IP address. If you would like to use your own domain name, DynDNS offers a custom DNS service for this as well for a yearly fee.

Step 6: Now go to https://www.dyndns.com/support/clients/ to download the DynDNS Updater. This is to automatically update your Dynamic DNS account in case your external IP address ever changes.

Now you can host a web site from your computer. If you want to change the default page that comes up when you browse to your site, right click on the little icon that looks like a house in the Virtual File System. Click “Default file mask…” and type the name of the file that you want to be served when someone browses to your website such as index.html. If you would like HFS to start automatically when you log into Windows, put a shortcut to it under Start – Programs – Startup. Also be sure to save your Virtual File System settings so HFS will remember the files you are hosting next time you open it up. If you have any more questions check out HFS’s Frequently Asked Questions.

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Comments

49 Responses to “How to Host a Web Site from Your Computer”

Pranav on December 30th, 2006 11:09 pm

Hi there.. this guide is simple yet extremely good!! Please let me know anything more about hosting from home if possible.. I want to host a forum also.. please can you tell me how to do that? Also, how to make a professional File/Image Hosting websites like rapidshare.com and imageshack.us ? please do let me know.. mail me at pranav_s_2000@yahoo.com

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Casey on January 3rd, 2007 10:17 am

Hello Pranav,

Thanks for the comment. I really appreciate your feedback. I have never attempted to host a forum or image hosting service from my computer but I’m sure it is possible. Let me see if I can find any articles on this and if so, I will email them to you. Just remember if you plan on having a lot of traffic you should look into using a professional hosting service because this could overwhelm your computer and bandwidth. This would especially be true with a forum or image hosting service.

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stealer_hunter on February 1st, 2007 12:36 am

some one stole your content !
http://www.technospot.net/blogs/index.php/2007/01/31/host-a-web-server-on-your-home-pc/

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Hans Jürgen Hoffmann on March 26th, 2007 9:28 am

Hi Casey,
lovely website!
What risk is associated withopening up my computer to the access required to run a website?

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Casey on March 26th, 2007 9:40 pm

Hello Hans,
Thanks for your comment. Rejetto, the maker of HFS, has a writeup about this on his wiki. http://www.rejetto.com/wiki/index.php?title=HFS:_Secure_your_server I hope this answers your question.

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Hans Jürgen Hoffmann on March 28th, 2007 5:49 am

Thanks – my website is up and running

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Mr.AyMaN on May 16th, 2007 1:41 pm

Hi Casey,

I’am AyMaN From Egypt

Thnx For these lovely website

And Lovely articles

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Crampon on June 26th, 2007 4:10 am

Hi Casey

Thanks for your help. Your instructions were really easy to follow and have made my life a whole lot easier.

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pork on July 27th, 2007 7:28 pm

Hello Casey
great article. Thier are a few that exsplain this and you sead it best. Thanks for the help and good luck to all

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Ryan on July 28th, 2007 8:45 am

Hey Casey

Is it possible to set this up when connect to a LAN?

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Casey on July 28th, 2007 8:51 am

Hey Ryan,

Yes, as long as your router or ISP is not blocking the port you are trying to use.

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Ryan on July 28th, 2007 9:21 am

How do you find out what kind of router or what port to use?

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Casey on July 28th, 2007 9:54 am

Hey Ryan

You have to log into your router to open ports. This means you will need to know your router’s address and its username and password. Your router’s address is usually the same as your default gateway address. Follow the instructions in Step 3 to help you configure your ports. Hope this helps.

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dpro on August 2nd, 2007 10:55 am

great! many thanks how do I install apache, php and mysql?

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dpro on August 2nd, 2007 11:18 am

I found this one for web developers using WAMMP
WAMP-based [Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP]

http://www.devside.net/

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Lloyd on August 6th, 2007 10:54 am

Hi Casey, I’m very glad I stumbled across your site this morning…excellent stuff!

Among a few other contributions I made this morning, here’s a little clarification about your comment above: “If you would like HFS to start automatically when Windows starts put a shortcut to it under Start – Programs – Startup.”

This is only 90% true as apps located in any Start + Programs + Startup only get launched when that user logs into Windows. To have an app start up when the machine starts, you need to either run it as a service or add a reference to the app into the registry for auto-startup. There are apps such as that found in Microsoft’s Resource Kits that allows you to run any desktop app as a service, too; most aren’t free, but some are.

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Casey on August 6th, 2007 7:08 pm

Hey Lloyd,

Very good point. I went ahead and corrected my wording based on your comment. Thanks!

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Jason on August 12th, 2007 7:07 pm

Hello Casey,

Thank you for the information! I don’t know too much about this yet, but here is my question: I currently have a dynamic IP, how big of a problem is this with running a website like this? The website is for a store, and should ideally be up 24/7, is there a script or something that can check and update the ip so that i dont have to manually do it and the webpage will be kept up todate?

Also I dont think we would receive high traffic, but any thoughts on how much traffic is too much for this kind of set up? I can see what kind of traffic we have had based on logs on our current site, and see if this would work for us.

Thank you very much! – Jason

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Jason on August 12th, 2007 7:18 pm

Sorry! I didn’t read the whole post and see that my first question is already completley answered!

Thank you!

However, if you still wanted to address my question about traffic I would appreciate it

Thank you – Jason

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Casey on August 12th, 2007 8:02 pm

Hi Jason,

I think the amount of traffic that your site will support depends on lots of different factors. For one, it depends on how much content is on the site itself. Another factor is the speed of your internet connection and the type of computer you are using to run it. If you are trying to run a business website, I definitely would not recommend using this. However, if it is just a personal website, something that you will be sharing with friends and family, I believe you will be ok. Hope this helps.

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Musicaddict on September 1st, 2007 11:53 pm

Casey-great article,very cool info! I was able to easily setup as you describe. Question if I may? What about running an application? For example, if I wanted to run a media player to host an “internet radio station”, but for max of 3 connections (basically just for some friends). Would that be possible? I know of sites/utilities to do that specifically, but for a more “wide” audience and I would like to keep in this simple/low bandwidth vein.

Thanks very much!

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Shad on September 10th, 2007 6:26 pm

Nice!!! With this tutorial I was able to easily set up a server to host a website on. Thank you so much!!!!

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Marc Caballero on September 28th, 2007 12:22 pm

I love you!!! Casey, you rock!

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Hoon on February 17th, 2009 7:39 pm

Hi

I was unable to download the HFS executable file.

http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/?f=dl

Says that Error 404: File Not Found.

Please help! Thanks

Regards
Hoon

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Casey Reply:
February 17th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Hi Hoon,

The download page on their site seems to be broken so I updated the link to point to another site where you can get it. Enjoy!

-Casey

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Hoon on February 18th, 2009 1:40 am

Hi Casey

Thanks for your speedy reply, I have clicked on the site, sure looks alright, but my company site blocked it!

The message was

Access Denied (policy_denied)
This website is blocked by Company’s content filtering policy. For enquiries, please contact your IT representative.

For assistance, contact your network support team.

Possible to send this exe file to my hotmail addy? Zipped or renamed so that it’s not filterend / blocked by hotmail?

Thanks heaps

Best regards
Hoon

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Jaap on March 2nd, 2009 8:17 am

thank so much, it is useful for us

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CJ on March 22nd, 2009 9:37 pm

Hi Casey,

Now i am working on dynamic web site by asp.net with database as well. I browse through the messages above, and i found out that the first comment is looking for the same thing as i do. Could you help me on this manner? Please mail me at oldshoes81@yahoo.com. Thank you.

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Kyle on May 14th, 2009 12:52 pm

This will not let me host images… could someone give me a tip?

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kevin on June 21st, 2009 8:54 pm

I got a question concerning HFS i followed the tutorial and i got it to work but i was wondering how do i secure it and also when i go to my website it goes there but after that it shows my ip address and the port number which i dont want it to show but i went to my no-ip.org account domain name which is kickasskevinnader.no-ip.org and if i set it to forward my domain name to my ip address then it goes straight to my router not my website or port 8000 i have to set it to redirect to my ip and if i do that it will show my ip instead of my url. please help me. But your tutorial helps a lot thanks.

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Harsh on July 5th, 2009 2:56 am

hi there,
very nice info, i just loved em and defntly gave it a try, my question is how to have joomla running on the server we just created…??
thanx

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Jensina on August 16th, 2009 6:38 pm

Hi Casey,

The website for the DynDNS has changed for creating an account. It is https://www.dyndns.com/account/entrance/

Thanks for the great info!
Jensina

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Casey Reply:
September 16th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Thanks Jensina, I have updated it

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Jensina on September 17th, 2009 7:57 am

My absolutely free website is now up and running! Follow Casey’s guidance and you can really do it yourself. I would share the web address except the site is run off a server in my home and I don’t think my ISP would like a whole lot of traffic at this point, it’s just an advance linkshell website and forums for FFXIV

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Casey Reply:
September 18th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Awesome! I’m glad I could help out

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manu on October 12th, 2009 9:41 am

hi, can i use smart ftp or is necessary to use HFS? thx

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Casey Reply:
October 14th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Hi Manu,

Unfortunately, HFS does not support FTP at this time.

http://www.rejetto.com/wiki/index.php/HFS_Frequently_Asked_Questions_%28english%29#Will_HFS_support_the_FTP_file_transfer_protocol.3F

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Eli on October 25th, 2009 12:15 pm

Is this for servers. When i followed your instructions it was a server, not a website!

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Casey Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Eli,
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. This program allows any computer (ie your desktop) to host a website. So, in a sense, your computer becomes a web server. Hope this helps.

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shivraj on November 1st, 2009 8:29 am

please help me,,,,,,,
i am using dna-a211-1,, when ever i enter the web site name it returns me the router page and not the web site.

help
help
help

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shivraj on November 1st, 2009 8:31 am

i had done the port-forwarding but it is not working.

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Valentin on November 26th, 2009 7:22 am

Hi, nice article. It works good but I’m having a problem with changing the index.html. I right click on the little house but the only options I see are:

Add Files…
Add Folder form disk…
New empty folder
Copy URL adress
Set user pass
Upload

I don’t see the Default file mask… I would appreciate much the help. Thanks!

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William on January 6th, 2010 7:41 pm

Thank you so much for this tutorial!!!
Although i had to change my port from 80 to 1337 lmfao.
Again, thank you. I am ever glad that this worked.
You have just made my day.
1337, leet. lol.

Reply
Casey Reply:
January 7th, 2010 at 6:16 am
Hi William,

You are very welcome. Glad everything is working for you.

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peter on January 27th, 2010 3:50 am

Its quite trmendous reading this article on how to host a wbsite.

I have tried to build a website using Dreamweaver,please kindly throw more light on how to get a domain name and possibly more articles on webhosting.

my email is awurumnonye@yahoo.com

I actually need an IT mentor to guide me in my quest for ICT wisdom and knowledge acquisition.

Thanks

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Shivraj on February 20th, 2010 1:35 am

hello every one..
please .please tell me . this thing does not work with me … i can only see my web site at my home .. but when i got my friends computer it does not show any thing……

why?????

and i need to host a asp.net web site at my computer … is it possible?????

please send me answers .. i really need it….

thankx for reading…

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Chris on March 12th, 2010 3:35 pm

Thanks for that. It works great.

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job at home on April 29th, 2010 5:06 am

I like design of your site What is the name of template ?

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Mayank on May 31st, 2010 6:59 am

hi everybody!

I wanna start a social networking website(with email and other facilities) with static ip address and a domain name using my system’s local disk.

I want to deploy *.net (.aspx files) and SQL 2005 server.

pls tell me this all wud cost me how much?

Reply