0

I am very interested in creating my own professional website. It won't be used for any business purposes, but will simply be a lightweight site that will serve my resume/CV, etc., and also a blog.

Now, as I understand from the research I have done, Wordpress itself is simply a content-manager, which enables be to easily build webpages with a plethora of plugins at my disposal. What you actually have to pay for is hosting and a domain name.

Is there anything to be said against hosting my own website? I'd like to get an Apache server up and running on my Raspberry Pi3, install wordpress, and simply run it from my home. This should only be a few dollars a year for a domain name, and that's it.

Is there anything to be said against this? Seems like a reasonable choice that will save money. As I said, the site will be lightweight - I will have a 64gb sd in my pi as the drive, and it has 1gb ram, so it may not be super quick with a wordpress installation but I think that's probably alright.

My plan would be something like this;

  • Configure Pi and install apache
  • install wordpress
  • do whatever port forwarding needs to be done
  • buy domain name, $12/year from Google
  • find a solution to the dynamic IP problem... perhaps just use no-ip and point my domain there?

And I think that's it, no? Of course I would also have some kind of automatic cloud backup running, maybe just to a google drive or something.

Assuming the technical know-how isn't an issue, why would someone not do this? Any advice?

Improve this question
11
  • If you want just a lightweight site, you could use github pages, which lets you host amazing static websites for free. Check out portfolio I created within minutes using github pages digvijayad.github.io . It uses jekyll and markdown. You can also redirect it to your own domain. Check out some of the free jekyll themes here jekyllthemes.org.
    – Digvijayad
    Oct 30, 2017 at 20:03
  • No reason not to. If you were talking about a business site selling things, or anything that would grow hugely popular, you might run into issues trying to serve from your own internet connection. ISPs tend to throttle you when you consume too much bandwidth. But assuming you're just talking low visits, your Raspberry Pi is a great place to start.
    – WebElaine
    Oct 30, 2017 at 20:04
  • I want to say "go for it", but on the other hand, when you have a VPS that gets hacked, it isn't really a big problem aside from your website being down. If you have somebody on your RPi in your home network doing nasty things, that might be another story.
    – janh
    Oct 30, 2017 at 20:06
  • @Digvijayad So how did you actually build that? Is there some kind of gui design environment? You install wordpress on it? It looks like it is some kind of applied theme. Also, this is what I don't understand... why are people with sites like yours paying for hosting when there are options like this?
    – pretzlstyle
    Oct 30, 2017 at 20:06
  • @janh what is VPS?
    – pretzlstyle
    Oct 30, 2017 at 20:07

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

I have a 'vanity' domain name and a web site to go with it. It's hosted by a big-time hosting place. It's a static HTML/PHP page, but I've also done 'vanity' sites by using a simple WordPress theme.

Although you can host on your own server at your house, there are security risks involved, along with maintenance. First, do you have a dedicated IP address with your ISP (which will cost extra, although there is some geeky stuff you can add to do that)? If not, you'll need to do additional tricks to 'point' your domain to your server. And there are some internal firewall/port forwarding you will have to do locally, and protection for other devices/users on your internal network. A lot of security risk if you don't do it right.

This is all 'fun' for geeky-types, and might be worth the effort. But I think the risks and work is a big consideration for self-hosting. You can purchase a domain name (which you will need anyhow) and cheap hosting for a couple $ a month. And that lets the hosting place worry about all the security and updates. You just worry about the content.

Some hosting plans will allow you to have multiple domain names on your hosting plan (I've got 20-40 domains on mine, but I've upgraded the hosting plan).

Even though I'm a geek, I'd rather the hosting place both with that stuff. I'll geek on the content.

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.