Your device is currently conencted to one of my long-term projects, in the form of an old laptop underneath my desk.

This project started after I discovered how most people host websites: they pay someone else to do it. I learned long ago that the internet is nothing more than a network of computers. If I own a computer, why would I have to pay someone else to host my website?

Looking for the answer on Google, I scrolled past seemingly endless advertisements for hosting services and website builders before I found the answer: instructions on how to create a webserver.

Here is a quick summary of the things I did for the next couple of days.

1. I started by finding an old laptop and wiping the hard drive


2. installed the Ubuntu Server operating system on a flash drive


3. plugged it in to the freshly-wiped laptop and booted the machine from the flash drive


4. I was greeted with a screen of nothing but lines of text. From this point forward, I would only be able to use the computer by typing command lines in Unix


5. learned how to install Apache and a Bitvise client. This would allow me to see the files on the laptop from another computer.


6. the longest and most tedious part: wrote HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files in Notepad and transferred them to the new server/laptop to create the actual webpage.


7. plugged an ethernet cord into the laptop and stored it under the desk


8. accessed the router's settings an opened up a port to the laptop's IP address


9. now, anyone would be able to connect to the laptop and see the website by typing the IP address in their browser


10. to make this a little easier, I bought the domain name from Google and connected the IP so someone would only have to type in "scottbera.com"

After a few more bug fixes and changes to the HTML, the website became what you are looking at now - a 100% self-contained website+server machine, independent of third party hosting services and stored in my own house.

(some images are not mine for security reasons)