So you've got broadband. It's super-cool. You're always online, you have a couple GHz's of processing power, and a half a gig of ram. You're practically an ISP of your own now, so what do you do with it? I mean, aside from World of Warcraft. You might as well put it to use.
You can add several free domain names by using free dynamic IP addressing. Try
DynDNS and install something like
DNSer. Just add a section like (I used ericxxx.com in these examples, though xxx is replacing my last name because people on the internet are insane, and I don't want them to find me):
[Source]
Interval=600
URL=http://checkip.dyndns.org
User=test
Pass=test
Prefix=Current IP Address:
Count=1
Log=1
[Srv1]
URL=http://members.dyndns.org/nic/update?hostname=booradley.homeip.net&system=dyndns&myip=%s
User=YOURLOGIN
Pass=YOURPASSWORD
MinInterval=600
MaxInterval=2160000
StatusOK=good
StatusOK1=nochg
StatusOK2=abuse
[Srv2]
URL=http://members.dyndns.org/nic/update?hostname=ericxxx.com&system=custom&myip=%s
User=YOURLOGIN
Pass=YOURPASSWORD
MinInterval=600
MaxInterval=2160000
StatusOK=good
StatusOK1=nochg
StatusOK2=abuse
And keep going for as many different hostnames as you want. That will also take care of either the free dynamic machine names, or a custom name. I have [myfirstnamemylastname].com and several aliases for it, along with booradley.homeip.net and a couple of others.
Install DNSer on a command line with: DNSerSvc.exe /install
That will install it as a service, so it's always running, even if you're not logged in. That will update your IP automatically every time it changes, so that your domain name always points to your current IP without you having to mess with it. Having a consistant name for your machine makes life on the internet much easier.
Apache for Win32 is a great web server. Install it as a service and, as long as your machine is running, you're hosting your own content. Provided you don't over-use your upstream bandwidth, it should be plenty fast for hosting images, sigs, avatars and such. I even use it to host 400*600 images of reasonably high quality images in picture threads on a few forums, though that's a little slow on high traffic forums.
Just put a short cut on your desktop for your image directory, and when you see something you want to use, just drag it from your browser window to your shortcut, and it's ready to go. It's also better than using email to transfer large files from one computer to another.
Add a section like the following to host several web sites:
NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName ericxxx.com
ServerAlias ericxxx.com
http://www.ericxxx.com/
ServerAdmin
olbooradley@aol.com
DocumentRoot "C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs"
ErrorLog logs/ericlog.txt
CustomLog logs/ericcommon.txt common
CustomLog logs/ericgood.txt good
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName booradley.homeip.net
ServerAlias booradley.homeip.net
ServerAdmin
boo@booradley.homeip.net
DocumentRoot "C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\boodocs"
ErrorLog logs/boolog.txt
CustomLog logs/boocommon.txt common
CustomLog logs/boogood.txt good
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName pictures.ericxxx.com
ServerAdmin
olbooradley@aol.com
DocumentRoot "C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\pictures"
ErrorLog logs/piclog.txt
CustomLog logs/piccommon.txt common
CustomLog logs/picgood.txt good
</VirtualHost>
One of the great things about hosting your own images is that you can configure logs and sort them and shake them out how you like. You find out who's looking at your stuff, how often, and where they're coming from, etc.
To spice that up a bit, install
Perl and, if you're inclined,
the windows binary of ImageMagick, which you can use to generate .gif's on the fly using perl. I wrote a script to take the current track in Winamp and generate a 'now playing' gif and write it to stdout, meaning to the requesting browser instead of writing to disk, and sometimes use it as a sig file.
Try
jgaa's WarFTP Daemon, a pretty nice, GUI driven FTP server, so you can put stuff on your computer from anywhere else on the planet. Just ftp to your machine, as you have it registered with dyndns.
Mercury Mail is a (realitively) easy to use GUI MTA you can run locally. Unfortunately, it doesn't run as a service, though. Not too big a deal, just minimize it and it leaves the task bar and goes to the tray. You can set yourself up with as many domain names as you like, add as many users as you like, and configure the corresponding accounts in your mail client with "localhost" as the mail server. I keep accounts for different types of mail I send myself, so it's already sorted, and I'm starting to use different accounts for different web forums, so I know where spam comes from. For example, if I set up
ots@booradley.homeip.net and it starts getting spammed, I know it came from here. Then I just delete the account and make a new one. I send myself links to
links@ericxxx.com and send stuff about politics to
politics@ericxxx.com , that way I don't have to sort my mail. Several other mailboxes for the same kind of thing. And, again, if one starts gettign spammed, I just change it and move the mail over.
Now that you're using the intenet, you might want to make your machine useful, locally, too. You can do this by downloding
cygwin.
It's a complete linux system compiled for DOS. It also has both an X server and client, which can be very useful over a network. I set up a linux box as an MP3 jukebox patched into my entertainment center, and export the graphics so I can operate my sterio in my living room via my PC in my bedroom. On Win2k or NT, righ-click My Computer and select Properties, go to the 'Advanced' tab and then on 'Environment Variables', add your /bin directory to the path, so you can use stuff like awk, grep, sed, ls, and such from a DOS Window as well as from the cygterm or an x term -- all under windows.
Last but not least, you can also use cygwin to install sshd as a service under Windows (or inetd for telnet) allowing you to have an ssh service running at all times, with full encryption. It's easy for it go go wrong, though, so if you want to do that, I'll refer you to the readme file and the man pages that come with cygwin.
Those are all pretty easy and useful, and give you full control of your system. No need to have your ISP limit the number of mailboxes you can have. Not in this day and age.
