Hack Attack: Set up and host a blog on your home computer
by Adam Pash
Click to viewIf you want to host your own blog, you can purchase a plan at a web hosting provider for a few bucks a month - or you can set it up on your home computer for free.
Weblogs, as most people know them, are web sites made of individual entries of various length, by any number of authors, organized in reverse chronological order. Of course, you know what a blog is - you read Lifehacker, and if you don't already have a blog of your own, you know someone who does.
The cool thing about blogs (and many other web apps, like wikis) is that they don't actually have to live online. A blog can live on your personal computer or somewhere on your network; you can use it as a private journal or as the main conduit for intracompany communication. Or maybe you just want to keep all of your personal data, blog posts included, on your own computer and not on Google's servers. Whatever the reason may be, setting up and hosting a blog on your personal computer is a painless process. Today we'll set up a weblog on your Windows PC using the popular open source blogging software, WordPress.
Note: WordPress is a full-featured, excellent piece of open source blogging software. In order to run it on your computer, you'll need to install an Apache web server, the PHP scripting language, and a MySQL database server. Although setting all of this up is not difficult (the process is detailed below), you can easily avoid the whole shebang and get your own free hosted weblog somewhere like WordPress or Blogger if those sites fit your needs. If you're aware of the alternatives, but you're determined (for whatever reason) to run a blog on your own computer, read on.
I've put together a step-by-step guide (7 steps in all) for installing WordPress and all the tools necessary to host it locally, so if you're ready to get blogging, click here (or the image above) to get started.
Note (part the second): Our gallery tool is a bit - erm - quirky at the moment, so to advance from one step to the next, click the link at the end of each description. You can try clicking on the thumbnails to progress, but chances are that doing so will leave you confused.
To get familiar with and tweak your WordPress blog, check out our WordPress tag, specifically:
Adam Pash is an associate editor for Lifehacker with a thing for hosting web apps for personal use on his home computer. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
Click to viewIf you want to host your own blog, you can purchase a plan at a web hosting provider for a few bucks a month - or you can set it up on your home computer for free.
Weblogs, as most people know them, are web sites made of individual entries of various length, by any number of authors, organized in reverse chronological order. Of course, you know what a blog is - you read Lifehacker, and if you don't already have a blog of your own, you know someone who does.
The cool thing about blogs (and many other web apps, like wikis) is that they don't actually have to live online. A blog can live on your personal computer or somewhere on your network; you can use it as a private journal or as the main conduit for intracompany communication. Or maybe you just want to keep all of your personal data, blog posts included, on your own computer and not on Google's servers. Whatever the reason may be, setting up and hosting a blog on your personal computer is a painless process. Today we'll set up a weblog on your Windows PC using the popular open source blogging software, WordPress.
Note: WordPress is a full-featured, excellent piece of open source blogging software. In order to run it on your computer, you'll need to install an Apache web server, the PHP scripting language, and a MySQL database server. Although setting all of this up is not difficult (the process is detailed below), you can easily avoid the whole shebang and get your own free hosted weblog somewhere like WordPress or Blogger if those sites fit your needs. If you're aware of the alternatives, but you're determined (for whatever reason) to run a blog on your own computer, read on.
How to install and host WordPress on your Windows PC: The slideshow
I've put together a step-by-step guide (7 steps in all) for installing WordPress and all the tools necessary to host it locally, so if you're ready to get blogging, click here (or the image above) to get started.
Note (part the second): Our gallery tool is a bit - erm - quirky at the moment, so to advance from one step to the next, click the link at the end of each description. You can try clicking on the thumbnails to progress, but chances are that doing so will leave you confused.
Getting good with WordPress
Now that you've got WordPress installed on your local computer, you've got a lot of options. If you want to make your blog accessible to the outside world, see:- How to assign a domain name to your home web server
- How to access a home server behind a router/firewall
To get familiar with and tweak your WordPress blog, check out our WordPress tag, specifically:
- A beginner's guide to WordPress
- The best WordPress plugins
- A Pile of Free WordPress Templates
- Customize Wordpress with Widgets
Adam Pash is an associate editor for Lifehacker with a thing for hosting web apps for personal use on his home computer. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
@Pat/HeartBurnKid: Like I said, opening the blog to the outside world may violate your providers ToS. That said, unless you're garnering a significant amount of traffic, chances are you'll be safe. I run a personal-use home server all the time without issue.
That said, nothing says you have to open this up to the internet at large. As I said above, you can set up a blog for personal journaling, or just to use on an internal network (e.g., a company blog).
@BostonMark: Again, of course you could purchase a cheap hosting account, but it'll never be as cheap as free. Unless I haven't made it clear, you don't want to set up a blog on your home computer that you expect to get any significant amount of traffic.
