LiveJournal, Xanga, Blogger:
your days are numbered.
With a few mouse-clicks and
a little manual config, hosting
your own blog is as easy as
writing one.
For the backbone of your blog,
hardware doesn’t really matter as
much as you might think. You can
run a web server on an old-school
CPU and a craptastic videocard;
you can run it on a dual-core rig
with SLI graphics. As long as you
aren’t planning to use your web
server as a gaming rig, you can
spend as much or as little on hard-
ware as your bank account permits.
Regardless of the hardware
you use, you need to be aware
of a few important setup issues.
Remember, you’re going to be
running a web server; when it’s
offline, so is your blog. So while
you’ll want to have Windows
automatically update and install
the latest patches on your box,be sure to set an ideal time. And
don’t forget the time-zone issue.
If you’re running a blog on the
west coast, arbitrarily setting your
computer to update at 3 a.m.
because it “seems late” could
render your blog inaccessible to
the east coasters who like a little
Web 2.0 with their morning lattes.
It’s important to keep your virus
scanner up and running on your
web server, but you’re better off
scheduling a daily, midnight drive
scan, as opposed to kicking on
the real-time protection. What you
trade away in security, you gain by
maximizing your system resourc-
es—this is crucial if you’re using a
lower-end rig to power your blog,
especially if you feel like multitask-
ing the computer as a file dump or
video streamer.S
o you have a blog. Cool, but let’s face it, that’s
just not very unique in the modern-day web world.
Everyone blogs; heck even your Xbox 360 has its
own self-updating blog!
One way to set yourself apart from the hordes, and
steer clear of restrictive hosting providers, is to use your
own gear to run your own blog. You not only earn more
geek street-cred, but self-hosting your blog opens the
door to limitless configuration options—whether you’re
using Notepad to edit bare-bones HTML documents, or
setting up the latest Wordpress plugins.
If you’ve never built your own server, or if you find the
concept of an Apache installation terrifying, don’t sweat it.
We’re going to help you shortcut the configuration head-
ache, so you don’t have to emo-blog about it later.Host Your Blog at Home
by DAVID MURPHY2'+# hours:minutes
00 : 50
1 Getting the Hardware Up-to-Speed
Don’t schedule your updates for mid-
day, or else your computer could reset
itself during prime blog-watching time.JANUARY 2007 MAXIMUMPC 55
ImprovIng your pc experIence, one step at a tIme how^2
wHat YoU neeD
BRoaDBanD InteRnet
ConneCtIon
a CHeaP PC
A laptop works too, but it’s not ideal
xaMPP
Free, http://www.apachefriends.org, or on this
month’s CD
woRDPRess
Free, http://www.wordpress.org
Dyn Dns UPDateR
Free, http://www.dyndns.com
K2
Free, http://www.getk2.com