Hosting a website on my own personal computer.

If this computer is on YOUR computer at YOUR house… YOu’re going to have some trouble — Unless you have a business account internet connection.

If this is on YOUR computer at WORK, then the steps are a LOT easier — Just, dont plan on using your computer much because the web server software will put some extra demands on that computer…

You should know this is NOT a recommended practice for a company website.

For an INTRAnet website it’s ok, but not for a public one.

All that said — some steps —

1.) If the website name (yourcompany.com) is not registered, GET that done. This will get the name into a DNS server…

2.) Once the webname is registered into DNS, then you can point that to the IP address of the computer that will have the web pages. This number will be the main ip address where the computer is — If it’s home, it’s the ip address that reaches your router from the public side, it’s NOT the same as the numbers on your computer! This applies really to home-based, or work-based setup.

3.) If it’s at home — you’ll have to change security settings in your router to allow web access to your computer (again, very few home internet providers allow this, in fact more and more BLOCK it!).

If it’s at work, then your network person will have to make those changes for you.

Those are the basics — there’s more to it — You have to install your web server software if it’s not already done. If you’re using WINDOWS at home, there is a free PERSONAL web server, it only allows 5 connections to it. If you’re using WINDOWS at work, there is IIS which is unlimited connections. for both of them, there is APACHE web server and TOMCAT as well…

It’s unclear to me why your “LARGE” company would want you to install a webserver on your computer if their intention is that their customers would be reaching it — it’s also unclear from your message if you mean your work computer, or your home computer.

Doing it at home WILL be a problem…unless you have a business account. If doing it on your home computer is the intention — I strongly suggest against it, and instead you use one of the MANY online web servers to do this instead.

For my own business, I use one that only costs $60/yr including the domain registration fee, and it does EVERYthing my home setup does, except it’s just not on MY computer.

Good luck…