Adam’s Atoms

Running a Home Web Site

Once Upon a Time

In the 1980’s many computer enthusiasts, including yours truly, enjoyed running a BBS. We left our computers running 24 hours a day, attached to a phone line with a modem. The modems were running at 1200, 2400, or, later, 9600 bps, a speed that seems extremely low by today’s standard but that was the state of the art in those days.

The phone line was usually an unlisted phone number, to avoid confusing non-computer users (i.e., the majority of people) from getting a shrieking noise if they dialed the number. Of course, the numbers were listed in special online lists.

Not So Long Ago

Once the Internet became widely available and popular, most of us stopped running a BBS and concentrated on getting a web site. At first, personal web sites were an expensive proposition. But soon places such as geocities started offering free web sites and many of us built one—or several—of our own.

Many still do. But most of us really do not care for those “free” web sites anymore. For one, they are not really free, since they post their own advertising, pop up windows and other annoyances on the sites. I am not saying this to criticize them. After all, it costs them to run their web servers and they need to recover their costs somehow.

Additionally, there is very little you can do with those “free” sites. You can only post text HTMLfiles on their servers, with perhaps some Javascript, but you cannot take a full advantage of a computer to create dynamic web pages.

Seems Like Yesterday

Meanwhile, web hosting became fairly affordable. So did web domains. So, many of us moved up and run our own web sites located, well, we generally really do not know where. Somewhere on the web. On someone else’s computer, which runs our own web site along with several other web sites, tens perhaps, or hundreds, who knows how many.

And many of us miss the good ole’ days of having the computer hooked up to the phone line, running 24/7, having people from all over the world come visiting us right at our home.

Today

Many things have changed quite recently. Many of us no longer rely on a modem connection. We now have a fast DSL connection, or perhaps a similar speedy Internet service. Once again, it has become possible to use our own computers as online servers, right from home. Indeed, you are reading this web page because you have downloaded it directly from my home computer to yours.