I my self got this question, whether we can host websites on your own Computer. First of all we need to understand, what is server. Web-server is a simple computer which serves the HTML, CSS & JAVASCRIPT files to the web browser in a collection of single file which is known as website, in order to access the website when ever we want, the computer is turned on all the time.
| This picture shows a server computer from 1998, picture credit: created by me. |
To make a web-server we just need a good internet connection, power supply and computer.
Firstly we need to do port forwarding. Port forwarding allows computers in private networks to connect over the internet which is accessible to anyone on the internet. In this method you need to contact your Internet Service Provider it is not free.
Another method which is install Packetriot which is free, Packetriot uses a secure reverse tunneling protocol to expose servers on local or private networks to the Internet. The steps to install and configure Packetriot is very nicely documented in their website. Also you can search for YouTube tutorial on how to install and configure Packetriot.
They are not paying me to advertise their tool, I'm only sharing the information for educational purposes only. I am using this tool and it is giving me best results, you can continue hosting your site with you custom domain name as well (if you want this part is optional, currently I am using random generated domain name given by tool it self).
After installing Packetriot, now you have to install XAMPP control panel or Apache HTTP Server, to server the combination of HTML, CSS and JAVASCRIPT file that is know as a single HTML index file or index.html file.
That's it, now you have your own web-server.
