Buy the cheapest laptop you can find, with a broken screen it’s fine.
Install debian 12 on it
give it a memorable name, like “server”
go to a DNS registrar of your choice, maybe “porkbun” and buy your internet DNS name
for example “MyInternetWebsite.tv”, this will cost you 20$/30$ for the rest of your life, or until we finally abolish the DNS system to something less extortionnate
Install webmin and then apache on it
go to your router,
give the laptop a static address in the DNS section
Some router do no have the ability to apply a static dhcp lease to computers on your network, in that case it will be more complicated or you will have to buy a new one, one that preferably supports openwrt.
then go to port forwarding and forward the ports 80 and 443 to the address of the static dhcp lease
now use puttygen to create a private key, copy that public key to your linux laptop’s file called /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
go to the webmin interface, which can be accessed with http://server.lan:10000/ from any computer on your PC
and setup dynamic dns, this will make the DNS record for MyInternetWebsite.tv change when the IP of your internet connection changes, which can happen at any time, but usually rarely does. But you have to, or else when it changes again, your website and email will stop working.
Now go to your desktop computer, and download winsshfs, put in your private key and mount the folder /var/www/html/ to a drive letter like “T:”
Now, whatever you put in T: , will be the content of your very own internet web server enjoy
Follow up question, did you have trouble exposing port :80 & :443 to the internet? Also are you also using Swarm or Kubernetes?
I have the docker engine setup on a machine along side Traefik (have tried Nginx in the past) primarily using Docker Compose and it works beautifully on LAN however I can’t seem to figure out why I can’t connect over the internet, I’m forced to WireGuard/VPN into my home network to access my site.
No need to provide troubleshooting advice, just curious on your experience.
If you don’t mind me asking, how do you host your site?
Buy the cheapest laptop you can find, with a broken screen it’s fine. Install debian 12 on it give it a memorable name, like “server” go to a DNS registrar of your choice, maybe “porkbun” and buy your internet DNS name for example “MyInternetWebsite.tv”, this will cost you 20$/30$ for the rest of your life, or until we finally abolish the DNS system to something less extortionnate Install webmin and then apache on it go to your router, give the laptop a static address in the DNS section Some router do no have the ability to apply a static dhcp lease to computers on your network, in that case it will be more complicated or you will have to buy a new one, one that preferably supports openwrt. then go to port forwarding and forward the ports 80 and 443 to the address of the static dhcp lease now use puttygen to create a private key, copy that public key to your linux laptop’s file called /root/.ssh/authorized_keys go to the webmin interface, which can be accessed with http://server.lan:10000/ from any computer on your PC and setup dynamic dns, this will make the DNS record for MyInternetWebsite.tv change when the IP of your internet connection changes, which can happen at any time, but usually rarely does. But you have to, or else when it changes again, your website and email will stop working. Now go to your desktop computer, and download winsshfs, put in your private key and mount the folder /var/www/html/ to a drive letter like “T:” Now, whatever you put in T: , will be the content of your very own internet web server enjoy
I host it via docker+nginx on my own hardware.
I’m in the same boat (sorta)!
Follow up question, did you have trouble exposing port :80 & :443 to the internet? Also are you also using Swarm or Kubernetes?
I have the docker engine setup on a machine along side Traefik (have tried Nginx in the past) primarily using Docker Compose and it works beautifully on LAN however I can’t seem to figure out why I can’t connect over the internet, I’m forced to WireGuard/VPN into my home network to access my site.
No need to provide troubleshooting advice, just curious on your experience.