Switching to DynDNS

[I.M.O.G.]

I have been kicking around the idea of doing my own hosting from home for my website. I currently am with 1and1 - I registered my domain thru them and they are doing my hosting currently.

My package with 1and1 does not give me SSI, which I didn't understand how that mattered at first but now I realize. Noob, I know.

So anyways, I own http://imog.us. I would like to host this from home, where I have a dynamic IP thru my ISP. I know people use DynDNS for this, right? So what do I need to do with 1and1 so that all requests for my domain go to DynDNS which will point to my home server? Can this be done without downtime?

I hope I got that right, anyways it should be clear what I'm looking to achieve. Let me know what I left out, or other things I should be aware of. Thanks!

[gangaskan]

I have been kicking around the idea of doing my own hosting from home for my website. I currently am with 1and1 - I registered my domain thru them and they are doing my hosting currently.

My package with 1and1 does not give me SSI, which I didn't understand how that mattered at first but now I realize. Noob, I know.

So anyways, I own http://imog.us. I would like to host this from home, where I have a dynamic IP thru my ISP. I know people use DynDNS for this, right? So what do I need to do with 1and1 so that all requests for my domain go to DynDNS which will point to my home server? Can this be done without downtime?

I hope I got that right, anyways it should be clear what I'm looking to achieve. Let me know what I left out, or other things I should be aware of. Thanks!


can you manage your DNS with 1 and 1? if not, i guess you could force a webpage redirect in your index.html

[smokie mcpott]

yes, you can set up 1and1 to point to another address.

set up a dynamic dns (im assuming you want your router to update this for you should your ip change, right?) through dyndns and have your 1and1 website pointing to your dyndns address. if your router is handling the ip changes, then all will be good. i host many sites that way

[Mr.Guvernment]

careful, most home connections forbid HTTP servers running unless you get the buisness lines., they may even block it, but if not check your agreement.

[I.M.O.G.]

Will it appear that the user is being redirected to a subdomain of dyndns, or will it appear that the user is still just going to imog.us?

[Mr.Guvernment]

depends if your domain host has "masking" if they do the person will see the domain they typed in.

[I.M.O.G.]

K, so if I'm hosting the site then I just need to know how to setup domain masking.

[Cheator]

Use zoneedit and you can use a dynamic client with your server so that your domain follows you.

[petteyg359]

If all you're using 1and1 for at this point is the domain, there are much better registrars available (such as GoDaddy).

AFAIK, using dyndns to connect a real (not one of the various dyndns subdomains) domain requires a paid account.

[smokie mcpott]

AFAIK, using dyndns to connect a real (not one of the various dyndns subdomains) domain requires a paid account.

not true. i use no-ip.com and dyndns to link real domains to my dynamic accounts. and my dynamic accounts are free

they want you to pay to REGISTER or HOST your domain through them, but you can goto 1and1 admin panel and point the redirect to dyn or no-ip...wherever you would like

[I.M.O.G.]

Well, at this point I'm hosted with 1and1. I went with them because I had dealt with them before, and I've actually heard more negative about godaddy - I'm not sure if that was a good choice, but I haven't had any problems thusfar. (outside of my own negligence not knowing the importance of SSI in managing my website) I am not aware of any advantages I may get out of switching registrars - if theres an advantage to switching to a "better" registrar, please be specific and I may consider it.

My main concerns with migrating my hosting which lead me to post this question, from 1and1 to my home web server are these:

1) I want it to appear that users are at imog.us, not a freeish subdomain.
2) I already have a bit of pagerank and I'm garnering a bit of traffic from Google, and I don't want the changes to negatively affect that

All said and done, I just want to get a bit of experience running my own web server and if its going to negatively affect what little traffic I have or my pagerank, I just won't bother. It sounds like it shouldn't be a problem from what I'm understanding so far.

I appreciate the comments thusfar, keep them coming. If one of you that has experience doing this with DynDNS would want to chat, drop your AIM or Gtalk handle in this thread and I'll catch you on IM - I may have some little questions in doing this to make sure I'm not messing things up.

[petteyg359]

Well, I've never done hosting with GoDaddy, just domains (and their domain control panel kicks the butt of every other registrar I've used (that isn't very many, though). Being able to add my own ns.mydomain.com IPs to the domain without having to contact support, being able to change settings on multiple domains at once, etc., is very nice). When I had hosting through 1and1, it was annoyingly hard to set things up, my site was always slow, and the stupidly low limited size of MySQL databases was annoying. I've since used several hosts, and my favorite shared hosting supplier is HostMonster (their servers have no problems and no slowdowns even when running several large database updating scripts on hourly cronjobs) and for VPS hosting both TekTonic and RapidVPS are good.