Unfortunately, the 50+ days of uninterrupted hosting came to an end recently. Whilst completing a new server hardware build, I plugged in the PSU to be greeted with a huge blue spark, accompanied by a loud bang. Although the power supply unit died, I was more worried about the fact that it took out the power to the whole house.

The server was to become a standalone backup server, but luckily I hadn’t slotted in the 4 x 250GB removable HDDs, otherwise I’d be looking at replacing them too.

Once I had isolated the burnt-out PSU, I flipped the relevant power switches back on and fired up the servers that slickhouse is hosted on. Within 5 minutes the whole setup was back up and running!

To those of you running Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005, ensure you have the following setup within the server configuration - When Virtual Server starts: Automatically turn on virtual machine if it was running when Virtual Server stopped. It saved me a headache and time!

For the past 5 or so years, slickhouse.com has been hosted on a shared Linux server, provided by UKHost4U.

While the hosting has been good, I’ve grown out of using a shared web server and all of the limitations that go with it. So, over the past year I’ve developed my own dedicated web server, with a twist - a) it’s Windows and b) it’s hosted at slickhouse itself.

For those of you interested in running your own web server, it’s actually a fairly straightforward, albeit time-consuming thing to do. And it proved successful - as you are reading this served up by the new server!

The hardware:

• AMD Athlon 3000XP (Barton core)
• 2 x 1GB PC3200 DDR
• MSI K7N2 consumer motherboard
• 4 x 250GB data drives, 1 x 120GB O/S drive
• Yeong Yang cube case

The software:

• Microsoft Server 2003 R2 w/SP2 (both host and virtual O/S)
• Virtual Server 2005 (1GB allocated RAM, 100% allocated CPU)
• PHP
• MySQL
• MySQL Administrator for a GUI w/MySQL
• ASP (and .NET)
• Filezilla Server for FTP
• Merak Mail Server
• AWStats for statistics
• Active Perl for AWStats
• IIS 6.0 for web

Alongside the web server itself I used the following:

• GoDaddy for domain registration
• ZoneEdit.com for DNS (dynamic)
• DynDNS for DNS (dynamic)
• Google Mail to collate all of the email
• Smoothwall for router/firewall O/S

As slickhouse.com uses WordPress, I found Keyboard Face very useful to ensure the permalinks worked correctly within IIS. The script itself is very simple and works well with most of the posts/pages on the site. The only issue I’ve encountered so far is with inTouch, which I use for the AJAX contact form, hence it now being reference via its Page ID. The article Installation Issues on Microsoft IIS is also a good read for those wanting to get WordPress up and running on Windows. DSL/Cable Webserver is another good resource, which documents the whole process to run your own web server from home.

I chose to use Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005, as it allows me to run several operating systems on the same machine. Currently the server only has the host and virtual operating systems, but I’ll be expanding it with a development server soon. Another advantage to going virtual, is that I can easily copy the whole server from one physical hardware platform to the next. So if a catastrophic failure occurs, I can quickly transfer the image of the server to another hard-drive, or Virtual Server.

This configuration has so far proved to be a lot more beneficial to my previous shared hosting solution with UKHost4U. For a start, I’m in complete control of the whole solution - from domain registration, to configuration of the server itself. Also, it means I’m not limited by the assigned disk space and bandwidth provided with my shared hosting package. My ISP at home is Virgin Media, who over the last week has upgraded me from 4MB/400KB Cable broadband, to 10MB/500KB - they still have an unlimited bandwidth policy too!

So what’s required then? I’ll start in order of what you see as a visitor:

1. Domain registration - to get yourself a name on the ‘net
2. DNS - to point your domain to an IP address
3. Dynamic DNS - to update your DNS with your dynamic IP address
4. Firewall/Router - to block and route traffic around your LAN
5. Web server (IIS 6.0) - to serve web pages
6. Mail server (POP3/SMTP) - to send and receive email
7. PHP/ASP - to server dynamic web pages
8. MySQL - to provide database(s)

The following domains are currently hosted on the web server:

• slickhouse.com
• lazlow.net
• babysfirstblog.com
• mrgradient.com
• slickhouse.homeip.net

With more to follow. Slickhouse.homeip.net is provided by DynDNS and the remaining domains have their DNS controlled by ZoneEdit.com

Let me know if you encounter any issues with the new hosting, as I’ve moved ~500MB from the Linux server across to the Windows server and have most likely missed something from my testing! If anyone is interested in having a site hosted on the new server, then get in touch - as a ZoneEdit account, along with a Domain of your choice is all you’ll need. Uptime is currently 39 days and counting…

I finally got around to registering 2 new domains for slickhouse.  At the same time, I decided to upgrade to UKHost4u’s advanced hosting. This gives slickhouse 4GB of storage space; 200GB bandwidth/month and several other additional benefits.

I’m undecided what to do with the new domains, slickhouse.net and slickhouse.co.uk - but once my mind is set, I’ll let you know. For now, they’re pointing to empty directories until I have enough time to code a few holding pages. They could simply point to slickhouse.com, but that may be a waste.

Still, at least I’m expanding my online empire…