Host your website at home?

You can host a website on your home computer. There's a technical difficulty though: most computers connect to the Internet using a dynamic IP address.

If you want to learn more about hosting your website at home, we recommend reading the How to set up a Web Server in Less than 5 Minutes article.

Dynamic addresses make it difficult to host a web site from home. Due to the constantly changing IP address nobody can find your site unless you notify them of your current IP address.

Dynamic DNS services allow you to assign a domain name to a site with a dynamic IP address. Whenever you are assigned a new address your computer automatically notifies the service, which in turn updates its DNS (Domain Name Server).

Your computer has to operate server software and needs a high-speed Internet connection for you to host a website. Residential Internet connections normally are slower than those used by hosting companies. Your web pages may load slowly – especially if they have a lot of graphics.

If you have a small personal site with few visitors, it may be feasible to host your own site. Dynamic DNS is available as either a free or subscribed service.

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