| I host my sites on a server in my living room. I use my HTPC at home as a server for my SVN and sites which haven't started making money for me yet. What I like about this setup is that I can deploy large amounts of data in an instant. I have a mostly static site with a few million pages I plan to update daily. More importantly, now I can justify paying for the fast internet connection and keeping the PC running 24hrs. The problem area is keeping backups. My server is a retired P4 I got from ebay for $50, which is not really reliable. I had to go through the pain of setting up all my backup scripts, which I guess I would have to do any way. The P4 has enough processing power to handle all my sites' traffic while I'm watching youtube on it. I also use the server to download anything and everything I need. It also serves as a file server and hosts some of my personal ssh tunnels and proxies. Having said that, I would recommend using a home server unless you really don't want to spend money on hosting or if you are worried about bandwidth caps. Start ups can benefit from a home server, but plan to movie it to a real server once you start growing. Don't invest on home server hardware or try to upgrade. What you already have is probably good enough. |