A. Preparation and preliminary testing of the
machine
B. Hardware needs
C. Loading an operating system
D. Installing the web server application
E. Configuring Apache for a basic website
F. Setting up your website on Apache
G. Starting Apache
H. Testing Apache
I. Registering an address on the internet for your site
J. Testing & advertising
A. Preparation of the machine
First, make sure the computer can be powered on. To do this, attach the mouse, keyboard and monitor to the back of the computer. Now plug in the power supply for the CPU as well as the monitor and switch both on. There should be a green LED light somewhere in the front of CPU that should light up. Also, the monitor LED should turn green and you should see something happening on the monitor.
Tips:
- If you're unable to power the machine on, check your power connections and electric sockets. Also check the power cables for wear-n-tear, and check both ends are inserted properly in their respective sockets.
- If nothing happens, this machine probably lacks a working power supply. Look for an appropriate power supply on pricegrabber or call your computer guru friend whichever you prefer.
- If only one LED lights up (e.g. only the CPU, not the monitor) then the other component may be faulty. If the monitor is not lighting up, look for a CRT monitor on pricegrabber after making sure the cables and electric socket are okay.
- If the keyboard and mouse plugs do not have an appropriately sized socket at the back of CPU, you probably need an adaptor (USB to ps2 or vice versa). USB devices have a flat plug, PS2 is round with several pins.
PS2 connector USB connector
B. Hardware needs
The computer may be lacking a CDROM drive, a USB or even an ethernet card. We might do away with USB, but we shall need an ethernet card (unless you plan to use dialup modem only) and a CDROM drive for sure. A CDROM drive will be used to load data and OS on this computer. The ethernet card will connect this machine to the internet in order to be able to host the website. Regarding USB, all USB devices may not work well with windows 95/98, so you probably won't invest money in buying a PCI USB card. However, if you intend to install Linux on this machine, you can go ahead with buying a supported PCI USB card.
Tips:
- Though Linux will install drivers for most devices automatically, some would still require manuall installation of drivers. Here, Linux is plagued with issues, unfortunately - you may not find a driver at all, or you may not be able to install it. Before you buy the computer components (e.g. an ethernet card), make sure it's compatible with the distro you intend to intsall. To know which hardware is compatible, check with the wiki or forums or other documentation on the website of your linux distro. If in doubt, ask in linux forums.
C. Loading an operating system (OS)
Once you are able to get both the CPU and monitor working, and the machine boots up, you will most likely see either windows 98 or windows 95 preinstalled. I strongly suggest you try one of the lighter linuxes (puppy, damn small, feather or others) if you have some experience with Linux. If you don't want to get your hands dirty, stick with an OS you have used already (e.g. I have used Ubuntu Linux before, so I used that).
Here you have two choices: Either to install a fresh OS, or to keep the existing OS. Generally, it is better to install a fresh OS because it gets rid of all the files/directories from the computer and we get a much "even platform" to build from.
(a) Installing fresh OS
Reboot the computer and enter it's BIOS to set first boot device as CDROM. Then use the bootable windows or linux CD to install the OS. If you can't get into BIOS, look at the tips below.
(b) Keeping the existing OS
The computer may have come loaded with many applications and files, and we should get rid of many of them to give it a fresh start. You can probably do several things on the existing machine to make it more "fresh". Some of the things you can do are:
- Uninstall unneeded applications (e.g. games etc)
- Remove unneeded windows components (e.g. fax programs, outlook express, desktop themes, disk compression etc.)
- Delete user files from "my documents" folder (windows) or "home"
folder (linux). Also see tips below.
- While deleting files from "my documents" folder, it's advisable to contact the person from whom you procured the computer. He/she may have stored valuable data on it years ago, and may have forgotten about it. Call him/her before deleting my documents folder. If the files are small enough, consider zipping them up and sending the zip file to the previous owner by email.
- You will get into the computer's BIOS by pressing some key(s) and set first boot device to Floppy if you boot from floppy, or CDROM if you have a windows/linux bootable CD. If you cant' get into BIOS, you can download smart boot manager and make a bootable floppy - and then use this floppy to boot from the device of your choice. Floppies may be hard to obtain these days though, so try this.
- When you start fresh copy of windows for the first time, it may ask you for drivers. If you don't have CD/floppies of drivers, go back to your primary machine (the other working computer) and search for drivers on the internet. Then transfer them to the old computer via floppy or CD and install them. Linux may auto-detect and install drivers for the newest and oldest devices, but if it doesn't - you should use google to look for information on the specific hardware+distro combo.
- The best place to look for linux drivers on the internet for specific hardwares are: Hardware manufacturer's website, your distro's forums/wiki, and Google.
- In Linux, the folder similar to windows' my documents is the Home folder (~). Actually the home folder is much more than that, but we assume it to be the linux equivalent of windows' my documents right now. Look for any files that you may find in the home folder of the pre-installed Linux, and contact the original owner of the machine before deleting those files. NEVER DELETE THE HOME FOLDER! If you do so, you may not be able to log back in with the same username and password in a linux machine. You may want to delete selected files from the home folder (e.g. photos, music, word documents) to free up some valuable space.