I can't, in good conscience, recommend you try running your own server, much less a Windows one. This is not because I think you shouldn't, but because the process of doing the thing properly is still needlessly painful.

Is there some reason you'd be unwilling to find a web host for cheap to host your stuff? Especially if it's just static content, you can bring the prices down to almost nil. You want a space to put your content, and the URL for accessing that over the net. Domains, databases, scripting, whatever strictly optional at the outset.

Now, if you want to be adventurous, and you don't mind taking risks, and you're prepared for any eventuality, then a guide like this has the low-down. Good luck.

Good question! I never thought of "Free".

First thing's first: does your ISP offer you any? Some do.

I don't want this to be taken like a strong armed approach to me telling you what to do. I only recommend not trying to start a server under windows, especially not your main machine. If you have a PC sitting around doing nothing that you want to repurpose, fine. Also windows is inferior to *nix operating systems in the server space. That being unix based and linux, which is closer to unix than some may think. As I am entering this world myself, I can speak of the time and research and pain that goes into it, You need to be open and willing to learn new things, and implement them the right way, accepting no shortcuts. You could get to know linux in a VM before trying to deploy it. Why linux? one word, reliability.

Well that's my advert outta the way, lol. Like I said, I don't want to be taken as some people like without naming names, you need to do this, period. but experience has shown me that linux is far superior than windows. Hey, but don't take my word fo it, Microsoft are working with Debian to deploy their Azure cloud.

to be honest I have wandered about this.
most hosts only support 50mb worth of space with a domain.
I have been seriously thinking of having a .tk domain set for a site thats free.
a wordpress site for bloggs.
I have one of those thats free.
next as long as you have 9 bucks you want to spend a month so round 120 bucks a year buying dropbox space of 1tb is easy enough.
Now its barebones I know but it works.
another way would you to use 000webhost.com and set one up.
it gives you 1.5gb free space, the only reason you may not want to set one up there is the capchas and the fact you can't get relyable downloads from them even medium files will not go all the way through.
You will need to buy some serious bandwidth first if you want to host your own site to.
I am in progress of trying to do that here getting bandwidth to support various things and some backup mirror servers and stuff to handle drive backups and also a small server here.
However its not really the easiest thing.
And with various things, going on, my mum getting eye trouble still ongoing and hardware drives failing data loss etc I havn't got to that point.
There is prevision for the cables but no one knows where it is.
In theory I should have been able to dig it with some help but its not happened and won't till christmas now.

Wordpress and Blogger let you publish but you have to go through their platforms. If all you wanted was static content than Amazon S3 is dirt cheap, but not free. Free is always beset with some pitfall or other, but if somebody knows of one, it'd sure help.

Hi.
First, I'd like to heartily agree with the people above:
If you want to serve anything, windows is really not optomal for that. Linux is rock solid
There are a few ways you can go about getting access to a Linux box. Like someone suggested above, try it in a VM and SSH in, buy a cheap linode, or (what I would recommend), buy a raspberry pi. There are seveeral threads here on the forum that talk about how to set one up.
(FYI) the Raspberry Pi is a little 35 dollar computer the size of a credit card that makes an excilent little server or hackable hardware project.
I use mine for tons of stuff, and it works great. It would be perfect for a blog, database, teamtalk server, etc. You would need to buy one, set it up, and plug it into your router, then forward the necessary ports (80 for http, 443 for https...).
There is much more you can do with Linux than just host a website or blog, google and see what your interested in.
Also... WHy apache? Why not Nginx?

use copy.com for free 15 gb storage but free is allways pane full

I'm with Blademan. I'd prefer Nginx over Apache. Like others have said, your best bet is to get a virtual machine, a vps, or a pi and go from there.

I'm a lighttpd person, myself. Not quite as lean as nginx, but a bit more feature-complete core-wise.

You can run a VM anywhere VMs run: on a public cloud, or in Workstation on your computer. What do you want to do?

I know that apple has OS 10 server, which (as I understand it), basically lets you host your own mini iCloud. It's 20 bucks (again, last I knew of it), and runs on existing mac hardware.
But honestly? Unless your a big enterprise that's really not what you need.
Now if you've got a mac just sitting around, always on, connected to the internet? Sure, you could make that a server.
But generally home PCs are not what you want for a server, even a small personal one. Better to run a VM with a cloud service, re-purpose (and by re-purpose, I mean take an old computer down to your mom's basement, hook it up to the net, slap a Linux OS on it, maybe give it a few harddrives, and accept that it's gonna stay there, doing nothing else but be your server...), buy a pi, etc.

I wanted to use OS X Server on my Mac Mini as my complete solution for everything from Internet gateway to mail and web services. It's good for the basics, but in typical Apple fashion it takes quite a bit of control away from you; you can't edit config files manually and expect to get away with it for long. Moreover, if you're not careful, it wants to set up as a DNS server which it insists you make your entire network's default DNS server. It is not what I'd call enterprise-grade, but there are certainly lots of features within that you don't require. It didn't have some of the things I wanted, either, like RAID6 for my external disks, IPv6 support in the gateway code, or DNSSEC. There'd be no harm in trying it though. If it fits your needs, there ain't nobody can take that from you. But in the end, I set up my Mac Mini as a Linux box, and did the work myself. I disagree that PCs can't make good servers--indeed, they often make the best servers, if they have sufficient CPU, memory, bandwidth and disk--but it doesn't have to be a monster either, and the heavier and noisier it is, the harder it will be to maintain and the more parts that can fail.

As an aside: you don't actually require OS X server to use the web server. Apache is bundled with OS X. Nothing would prevent you from simply starting it up, and beginning to serve files from it yourself, configuring it as necessary just as you would on a Linux machine. Here's a guide for reimplementing the feature that was removed from earlier versions of Mac OS.

thanks for the guide, I'm going to read it someday. I actually decided to wait to set up the server until I have a spare working computer and another router, because if my parents catch me connecting my computer to their router the I'm fucked.