So you have this Windows machine, and you really have to have a server. It's not necessary to spend thousands of dollars on all those fancy Microsoft licenses and wade through complicated setup and maintenance procedures. You can get the stuff for free and works well enough.
With Linux, you'll often hear of the LAMP stack -- Linux, Apache webserver, MySQL database and PHP. There is also a WAMP stack, with pretty much the same stuff. While I still highly recommend Webmin for Linux, and Webmin will work on Windows, it won't work as well. There are fewer modules for Windows, and you'll need a different collection of servers not covered by Webmin. So I recommend zPanel. It's not as fancy and commercially slick as cPanel, but zPanel is free and it will get you past the worst of the configuration details.
You can download the zPanel installation guide (PDF). They offer a brief tutorial on setting up a server to run from your home. If you plan to do this, I highly recommend you see this video tutorial at YouTube because there are a few gotchas in the process. However, what might interest you the most is zPanel installs Apache, MySQL, and hMailServer for you, and configures them for use. If you need to run an FTP server, it works best with FileZilla server, which is also free.
This all assumes you have some idea what to do with a full server operation. There simply isn't space to teach webmastering and systems administration on this site. However, if you know what you need, this is the least painful way to get it. No, there is no Samba server setup, because Windows does file and printer sharing natively. Tutorials are all over the Net, and it only takes few minutes.
Central Oklahoma Computer Ministry -- helping you to need less help.
By Ed Hurst
27 January 2011
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