What Would I Want a Web Server For Anyway?

[Rob Swan]

If You Pay For Website Hosting
If you want your own website with a unique address (MyShop.com, Fred-Bloggs.co.uk) you will normally have to pay a company to host your website (hold the files that people will access when visiting your site).

In most cases this is the best way as you can leave it up to them in the event of a problem.

You will have to pay your hosting company for mail boxes also (Fred@MySite.com, Webmaster@MySite.co.uk ), also if your site gets a lot of visitors you may have to pay more.

You will have to pay more if your site is on the large size and also pay more if you want any extra bells and whistles, all in all this can start to get expensive!


If You Had Your Own Webserver
If you were to set your own web server up, it could cost you as little as £15 per year for the registration of you domain name (MyWebsite.co.uk, JonsHouse.co.uk).

You would have all the bells and whistles you want at no extra cost.

You would be limited by your ISP’s usage allowance (if you are not using an unlimited account which is recommended when running a web server) .

The speed of you connection to the internet may be a something to consider, you would be better off with fibre optic broadband, however where fibre is recommended it is not essential.

You don’t need to purchase any expensive hardware or software either.

So, say you had an old desktop PC or Laptop that used to work great on windows 7 hanging about.

The chances are, your old computer won’t be very good on Windows 10 (on Windows 11 it won’t meet the hardware requirements).

This old PC would be perfect as a web server.

I would not go much older than the windows 7 time period though, but it’s your call.

Contrary to popular belief, all the software you will need for running a web server is FREE!

The main downside for running your own server is that you are responsible for its maintenance and up keep.

If you take regular backups, it’s not that hard to re-install the software and then restore your backups (in the unlikely event of a problem).

Personally, I would not be without my own web server as it saves me a lot of money and gives me full control over everything.