How to run a web server from your computer?
A Web server or an Internet server is a system or a program, which deploys server/client model and the Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP to deliver services or content to the end-user over the World Wide Web.
The server comprises of a physical server, a server operating system, and software to facilitate communication. Every computer/laptop/PC connected to the Internet needs a Web server program to forward HTTP requests. Web servers comes as part of intranet or Internet related programs used for downloading requests to the File Transfer Protocol or FTP files, serving email, and building & publishing webpages. Most of the users choose a web server on the basis of following considerations:
(i) How well the server works with the OS as well as other servers
(ii) Its capability of handling server-side programming
(iii) Security characteristics
(iv) Site building, publishing, and search engine tools that comes with it
Here’s how a user can set-up a web server on a computer, Android phone, or tablet device:
Step 1: The first step is to select a web server for your device. While it is not important to check the processor speed or capacity, you need to ensure that your computer is able to save a lot of data or information. If a user has a router then the device should be connected directly to the router and not to the wireless. This significantly minimizes the server downtime.
Step 2: Select a popular web server program for your computer. It is important to choose a right system as the program runs directly on the web server to deliver content & service requests. A user can also select a program that runs in parallel to the computer and improves the device efficiency. The popular web servers are Apache and Microsoft’s IIS.
Step 3: After selecting an appropriate server program, the next step is configuration of the web server. Most of the web server programs come with a configuration guide on how to perform this.
Step 4: Post web server configuration, a user can create a page for testing the server. This is done to ensure that your index files are correctly placed on the document path of the web server.
Step 5: Navigate to the following Internet Protocol (IP) address in your computer browser —
http://127.0.0.1, or to the local host: 8080.
Check if your site continues to the next step. If your web server is not running on port 80, then test your website on http://127.0.0.1:portnumber/. In this situation, you may require to re-configure your server if you are unable to see this website at all.
Step 6: Check with another user to test your website on http://yourWANip/. If the user is able to see the website, then continue to the next step.
Step 7: Obtain a domain from a host and set this as your WAN IP. In case you have a dynamic IP then make sure that your domain registrar has a dynamic DNS service, which directs the domain to your existing IP address.
Step 8: The last step is to make your website. In case you selected server-side scripting, install these applications & configure them in your web server.
