How can I set up a from home hosted website without buying a static IP?

Question

So I know that somesites allow you to host web content for you, but they can start to charge an arm and a leg based on how much you want to update it, how much you have, and other things. Pretty much what I want to do is host a personal site for and about me. Essentially access things I need like RPG characters and references, cosplay stuff, gaming stuff, and all that ilk.

I'm going to be investing in a small box that is more or less always on and always online, unless I loose internet for some reason or have to restart a router etc, but I'm running into the issue of I need to buy a static IP which is around $60 a month. That's $60 I don't have or want to spend on a little pet project. And before you suggest or ask, no I don't want just a site like blogger or w/e to do it for me.

My question is, and I know that I've been told this before by a friend I just can't seem to remember what he said, is there a way this can be done without using a static IP address and hosting the site from home still?

Oh I should also add that I'd eventually like this to be something I can host my own RESTful webservice on for small little one off personal apps I'd use for myself too.

Answer 1

Actually you live in an elastic cloud century, there is no need to buy any static IP. You can try these things as follows.

1. Amazon Web Service . You can get 1 year free trial, EC2 is really wonderful to host whatever you want.

2. Openshift . You can freely create 3 gears to host your application. The environment is very easy to configure. If you want to deploy symphony , laravel and some other frameworks, openshift should be the best choice.

3. Free web service .

Answer 2

You could use a Dynamic DNS service. You create an account (it often costs money, but there are some plans where it's free if you log in every month), and then install a piece of software on a computer/connect it to your router, and you get a subdomain like network63.example.com, which you can have a CNAME in your Domain's dns records to. Then whenever your IP changes, the software detects it and sends a request to their servers to update the record. I'm actually considering starting one myself. These are generally a lot cheaper than getting another IP address.

I host a few things from home (A gitea server and an ownCloud server), and I haven't needed this as although I don't have a static IP, it doesn't change very often, and it's easy enough to update the record after my router restarts or there is an outage (very rare), although this probably varies by ISP.