server questions
 

I am thinking about hosting my sites on my own server. Is it possible to do it mostley through a GUI? What type of linux is best? I am thinking about SUSE linux. What web server program is the best?

I believe Ubuntu is the most popular desktop Linux OS, although SUSE will give you more of a Windows feeling. You should lookup the LAMP software bundle for a web server.

Do you mean on your own server at home? I tried that about 12 years ago and I would not recommend it unless it is a small personal site. Bandwith will be a big problem plus hosting is so cheap these days.

For test sites though on my own pc I use WAMP and have also used Lamp and XAMP. Both are great bundles you can install on your pc and use. I do not use this option so often these days but it is great if you want to install a test version of your site on your own pc.

Yeah I would not recommend trying to run it from your own server at home.

I am going to have the server at my house. I do not like my host, i do not want to rent a server and collocation costs to much. I have the server. I got it for $60 on ebay.

Hopefully it will work out for you, but your ISP may have you upgrade your service, if to much bandwidth is used.

2nd.. :up:

If you want to try it out before you actually get into it because its a lot of work running it and trying to keep it secure and what have you, so to run a trail i suggest you google running a WAMP on your windows machine. You can run Apache, MySQL & PHP on a Windows machine for testing purposes by using WAMP and installing it. Give it a try, if you like it and can actually set it up and use it then try to set it up with a Linux machine. But remember you are going to have to actually use Linux to have a server on it. lol

I think this is one of those questions, if you have to ask, you're not ready.

Yes, I agree.

There are many things to consider here like bandwith usage for one. I am not even sure your isp will allow it for long. Also you will have to open a port and who know's how quick your site will load this way.

If you have a server it would be great to use as a test server or work server but it is not going to be easy to run your sites from it especially if you get any decent traffic ever.