3 Steps. Ready? Here we go:
- Buy a Raspberry Pi
- Use Google to find a manual
- set it up
Seriously, Raspberries are great for stuff like that. You have a separate device. You can setup the whole networking stuff. You can create a server without messing up your current setup. You need to do all the work. Plus, you learn Linux basics. The better setup anyway. Uhmm… yes, you could use some old device of yours. But the Raspberry is going to use way less power and take up a lot less space.
Linux is very versatile and the default operating system for Raspberries. Usually I would recommend trying CentOS for a server. But the experience unfortunately is, that CentOS didn’t manage to actually create a useful image for the Raspberry Pi and unlike other distros makes it way harder to get set up.
Therefore the next best idea would likely be Debian and coincidentally for Raspberries that is Raspbian, which is the default operating system for Raspberries anyway. I usually don’t recommend it for other stuff of for Raspberries generally. But in this case, going by recent experience, it’s actually a great option. You might want to choose the minimal or lite option though and start from scratch. A web server doesn’t need bloat like GUI and stuff.
Raspberries are generally low-performance devices. Meaning, you shouldn’t use some intense setup. But a basic web server is quite light in weight. And a basic website should do. Although, if you want to go deeper, just do it step by step.
There are tons of manuals out there. By the way, personally I would recommend to switch to nginx as soon as possible though. From there get the basic server up and running. Harden the security. Make the according network settings to access it from the inside and outside. Upgrade to a WordPress setup, upgrade to NextCloud,… and so forth.
This is how you do it.
If this is way over the top and you just want to test a few websites locally, you can just as well use something like XAMPP. That’s really as easy as it gets. It gives you Apache,SQL and PHP all in one go with a basic installer. Just remember where you install it. You are going to need it. The settings are there and the directory for the web data too, unless you change the settings. In this case of course, you are not learning much about Apache and the other stuff though.
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