You don’t actually require a DNS name service to run a website or FTP server. A DNS is just a service (it’s not free) which matches the name of your website (such as www.yourname.com) to its live IP address. So others who need to log on to your website don’t have to remember the IP address, but just the name. Similarly, instead of going through the headache of registering a name against the IP address and spending money for no actual reason, just host your own Web server at home using your desktop computer and some freeware. All you have to then do is spread the news around that you have your own website and distribute the IP address link using email or a chat service. For example, if you would like to host your website and want others to access it, just ask them to type the address (actually the IP address) directly into their web browsers’ address bar (for instance, ‘http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx’, where ‘xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx’ is your machine’s live IP address. It can be accessed from anywhere around the world.)

The same procedure will work for the FTP server too. MTNL broadband in Mumbai and Delhi offers a live IP address with their broadband Internet service for as little as Rs 1,000 per year. Other Internet service providers such as Hathway, Reliance, Sify, etc also offer the service at different rates. So take advantage of this live IP service, create your personal website and host it from your very own computer at home. The only possible drawback is that if you need your website to be accessible 24x7, you need to keep your computer switched on 24x7.

Let’s now proceed to what you will need to do to build this server and how to get it working. What you need for this workshop is a high-speed broadband connection with a live IP address and any old computer. We are going to use software that can run on Windows XP or 9x, but with similar software you can use Linux too. Let’s start with the basics. You need an HTTP server (web server) program to host your website and an FTP server program for sharing your files if you need to. We have used Abyss Web Server X1 (version 2.5) and Xlight FTP Server (version 2.835) for this workshop.

Then simply copy the needed files to the folder ‘C:Abyss Web Serverhtdocs’, which is the Web server’s document path. Your opening web page must be named either ‘index.htm’, ‘index.html’ or ‘default.aspx’. You can even change the order in which the server looks for these default files from the configuration page under ‘Index Files’. You can even use the same configuration page to add other types of files that you have created. The settings are now done, and your server is ready to host your very own website.

Configuring your server: Abyss is quite a simple application to use. Right click on the Abyss Web Server icon in the system tray, click on ‘Show Console’, and feed in the user name and password that you entered during installation. This will take you to the default configuration page of your web server where you can customize it according to your needs. For example, you can even get your web server to function like an FTP server (but you cannot upload files here, only download them) by using the ‘Aliases’ feature. Set a name for your link and select the directory or drive you wish to be displayed to remote people so that they can download files from your computer.

For example, if you would like to share the files from the folder ‘D:Software’ on your computer and want your guests to access it, just let them type the URL ‘http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/download’.
All you have to do is add the aliases using the virtual and real path names. Other options available are ‘Users and Groups’, ‘Index files’, ‘Directory listing’ ‘Logging’, ‘URL Rewriting’, and more. To know more about what each function can do, just click on the ‘Help’ link located in the top right corner of the configuration web page. You can also see statistics of how many hits you get on your Web page, errors, the amount of data downloaded, etc from the ‘Statistics’ link on the configuration page.

Tip: If you want your friends to access your Webpage using a name for your website, they can do so by tweaking the ‘hosts’ file in Windows—it’s very simple. Let’s take an example here—if you want them to use the name ‘www.abcdxyz.com’ as the website address for your IP address ‘xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx’, all they have to do is add a line ‘xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx www.abcdxyz.com’ to the end of the page of the ‘hosts’ file
located at ‘C:Windowssystem32driversetc’ by opening it in Notepad. So the next time they type ‘www.abcdxyz.com’ in their browser, your web page will be located and loaded. This happens because whenever they type ‘www.abcdxyz.com’, their system will look up this file first, find the IP address of your machine and directly log on to your web site located at that particular IP address—a mini DNS server located on each individual computer itself.

Installation: Building your own FTP server has never been so simple. All you need to do is download a light, 426 KB application called ‘Xlight FTP Server V2.835’ from http://www.xftpserver.com/download and run it directly without installation. It is a portable FTP server which stays running in your system tray when loaded.

Configuring your server: Start the software and click on the ‘New Virtual Server’ icon on the top left corner of the window. Choose the IP address (the network card you want the FTP server to work on) and leave the port number set to ‘21’. Click on ‘OK’ and then right-click on the new server you just made and click on ‘Start Server’.

Your server is now running and waiting for connections. But you need to specify which files can be downloaded by your friends and who can access these files. For this, you will need to first create a use rname and a password for those who will be able to gain access to your FTP server and then define a home path for them to download files from. Click on the ‘User list’ icon and in the page that pops up, click ‘add user’. Here you can add the user names and passwords which they can use when accessing your FTP server.
You may choose ‘anonymous’ username and no password too if you wish, but then everyone will be able to access your FTP server. Then choose the ‘Home Path’ which will be the location from where a user can start downloading files when he logs on.

You may create folders for each user to serve individual files to individual users. Once this is done, your server is ready for use. Use the same principle as the Web server to access the FTP server from the Internet or any intranet. Just type in ‘ftp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:21’ in the browser or use any FTP client application to access the server.

You can pause, stop or view logs from the control icons in the FTP server window. Choose the server messages from the settings page, choose the IP addresses you need to allow or disallow from logging into your FTP server, or enable disk quotas for each user.

You can also control the speed limit of each user for downloading and set permissions for each user to upload files to your FTP server. Just play around with the settings to finally set the FTP server. Get help on complete details on what each setting can do by clicking on the Help icon. Voila! You have just set up an FTP server of your own.

There are also other free applications available on the Internet that can be similarly used as free web and FTP servers. Well, now that you have installed your very own servers, go ahead and launch your website and FTP server @ home.