Hosting a website on a Mac OS X server

How easy is it?

[bouncybunny]

I have a spare Mac, a copy of OS X Server (it's an old 10.3 disk) and a few spare domain names and I was thinking of setting up a few non-mission critical web sites on it. As much for fun and testing as anything else.

I am very Mac literate, have a half-baked understanding of DNS and have messed about with Windows IIS servers, but am far from a web hosting expert. Up to this point most of my hosting experience has been as a reseller with Linux based hosts - WHM and CPanel.

Has anyone with experience of setting up a web site under OS X got any tips? Am I on a hiding to nothing, or is it all fairly straightforward?

Thanks.

[your_store]

Most content can be served through the built-in Apache. Beyond that it's similar to any *nix based server.

[timster]

It's very doable. Since you are talking about hosting a few different domains, you may need to edit your httpd.conf file to set up a few virtual hosts.

[onlamp.com ]

[macdevcenter.com ]

[bouncybunny]

Thanks guys.

Although, I think those links seem to be for the OS X client OS rather than the Server package as such.

[timster]

Sorry, didn't see you had OS X Server. You should be in great shape, mostly point and click stuff.

[bouncybunny]

No worries, the principles are all the same. Although it is only Panther 10.3, but I reckon that would be OK for messing about with.

When I played around with it, it did seem to be fairly bouncybunny proof. ;)

[Spongy]

yes, its fairly simple -

I host about 10 sites on my G4 1.25Ghz with 1.5 GB RAM and it handles it very well. You don't really have to do anything with internal DNS to get the webserver working and you can host your own FTP sites, webdav area and email server fairly simply, so go for it.

The most important thing is having a static IP and having good DNS - that has seemed to be the weakest link in my chain. I use everydns.net and backup dns hosted by twisted4life.com...

HTH