Ever wanted to host your own website from the comfort of your house? Ever wondered how to achieve this? Search no further! This guide will help you with the installation and configuration of web server software, which is what allows a computer to start handling HTTP requests and serve web content in response.
Besides helping you with the installation, this guide will help you getting the right certificates, configuring your server and publishing your homebrew served website.
The web is the single most known part of the internet. Because of that, it often happens that 'the web' and 'the internet' become conflated. Therefore, it often becomes a bit hazy to state what the difference is between the internet and the web.
Generally speaking 'the web' is only the part of the internet that we interact with with a web browser. More technically speaking, the web is the part of the internet that runs on port 80 and port 443 and that uses the HTTP and HTTPS protocols.
Websites are text documents that are formatted through HTML, CSS and JS. These three technologies tell the web browser what the structure of the page is, how it should be laid out and what kind of interactions are possible. Websites are transmitted using Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, which is why we usually type them like so `http://homebrewserver.club`.
The Apache HTTP server is a free and open-source web server software and it has been around since 1995, being the most widely used server software in the world. Because of this, documentation is plentiful and the support community is very large, meaning that help is quite easy to get for any of your server issues.
There are, of course, other web server software available, the most popular of which being Nginx. Nginx, which is also free and open-source software, arrived on the scene circa 2004, and it also became a favourite for its resource efficiency.
If you want to geek out further about the differences between Apache and Nginx, [this article](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/apache-vs-nginx-practical-considerations) will give you an overview.
You can find Apache's configuration files in the following location: /etc/apache2/sites-available.
The 000-default.conf file should look a little something like this:
```
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
<VirtualHost*:80>
# The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
# the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
# redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
# specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
# match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
# value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
# However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
# ServerName example.org
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
# Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
# error, crit, alert, emerg.
# It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
# modules, e.g.
#LogLevel info ssl:warn
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
# For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
# enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
# include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
# following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
# after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
#Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>
```
For ease of use, and in case you would like to have several websites/services running behind a single server, copy this file into another, easily identifiable one, for example, calling it something like "mydomain.conf".
```bash
$ sudo cp 000-default.conf mydomain.conf
```
Using your favourite text editor, uncomment the ServerName line and change it to reflect your domain name:
```
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
<VirtualHost*:80>
# The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
# the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
# redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
# specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
# match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
# value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
# However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
ServerName mydomain.org
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
# Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
# error, crit, alert, emerg.
# It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
HTTPS, which stands for *hypertext transfer protocol secure*, is an extension of the HTTP protocol. As its name suggests, it adds a layer of security to the data exchanged between client and server. By adding an encryption layer to the exchanged packets, it seeks to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks, eavesdropping, etc. While HTTP uses port 80 by default, HTTPS uses port 443.
As part of its bigger goal to "encrypt the entire Internet", the [Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://certbot.eff.org/about/) developed Certbot, a free and open source tool for automating the server-side deployment of [Let's Encrypt Certificates](https://letsencrypt.org/), thus enabling HTTPS.
Let's get down to it! Again, these instructions are specific to Debian 9 (Stretch), but detailed instructions for installation on other distros can be found on [Certbot's website](https://certbot.eff.org/instructions)
First, add backports to your packages list and update it:
```bash
$ echo deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list && sudo apt update
In case you didn't notice, there is now an if statement that evaluates true in case a certain module is present. In this case, it evaluates to true if [mod_ssl](http://www.modssl.org/) is present. [Apache modules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apache_modules) can be installed as following:
```bash
$ sudo a2enmod modulename
```
To verify which modules are already running on your server, type:
Your certificates expire after a period of time. You can, however, automate renewal by adding a [cron job](https://www.ostechnix.com/a-beginners-guide-to-cron-jobs/) that schedules when the specific renewal command should be run.
Start by running:
```bash
sudo crontab -e
```
Add the following:
```bash
5 55 0 * 5 /usr/bin/certbot renew
```
This means the certificates will be renewed every week on Friday at 05:55. You can of course edit these times according to your preferences!
If you cd into your /var/www/html folder, you will find this default index.html. As recommended by this page itself, you should edit this file before continuing operations on your webserver.
Open it on your favourite text editor and let's get started on a bare-bones "Hello Homebrew World"! webpage.
```html
<!doctype html>
<htmllang="en">
<head>
<metacharset="utf-8">
<title>My first homebrewed webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello Homebrew World!</h1>
</body>
</html>
```
Open your browser again and savour the fruits of your hard work.
