A Noob's Guide to Hosting a Website on Banana Pi with Apache2

Maybe you are a nub, maybe you are not, it doesn't matter, let's host a website on Banana Pi.


My website can be found http://projectbananapi.ddns.net/ (it is hosted on Banana Pi)

Overview

Apache2 is  a software that can host websites! Yay! And with a Banana Pi, we can host multiple websites from your home for free. This guide will walk you through on how to:

• Install Apache2 on Banana Pi
• Build a website
• Upload a website
• Configuring settings for a website or multiple sites
• Setting up an URL for a website
• Setting up Port Forwarding for a website
• Going to your website on Chrome

Installing Apache2 on Banana Pi

This step is not hard and I think you can even do it without a brain! I have wrote previous guides on how to do this and I will share it with you here.

To set up Bananian

http://projectbananapi.blogspot.com/2014/12/banana-pi-start-guide-now-what.html

To set up Apache2

http://projectbananapi.blogspot.com/2014/12/web-hosting-on-banana-pi-with-apache-2.htm

Building a Website

Building a website is fun and might be just a little challenging for those who lost their brains, but I think it can be managed without brains also!

There are many different programs and formats for a website and I recommend a basic html website with css and javascript. It is the foundations of most websites and it has unlimited potential. (unless you want to make a forum or link databases)

The Weebly Way

If you have no brains, type "weebly" in a search bar and press "enter". Click on the first link that appears and follow the instructions on the page. You don't even have to host it on Banana Pi!

The DIY Way

Download a template or start from scratch and make a html document. I suggest w3 templates since they are free and pretty decent too. Open up a html editing software like Dreaweaver and edit your way around the html tags.

<h>here is what will be displayed and it HAS to be followed by</h>

<p>this is a smaller version of what will be displayed</p>

the labels here correspond to a section in style.css 

.h {

color: 5f5f5f;

}

and you can see that it specified that the color of "h" is "5f5f5f" which is a grey.

Uploading a Website

Go back to my guide if you are reading this line

http://projectbananapi.blogspot.com/2014/12/banana-pi-start-guide-now-what.html

Basically just install FileZilla and make an entry with the local ip and logins of your Banana Pi.

Configuring Settings

On Bananian navigate to

cd /etc/apache2/

ls

Now you can see the file directory for the Apache2 application (it is not where your website is uploaded)

To edit the settings, go to

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default 

Now be careful, here is where all the configuration takes place. You will already have texts in here and what is important to take out is the below lines. Below is ALL you need to have in your configuration. I went out of my way to find the simplest way to make it work:)

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /var/www
ServerName projectbananapi.ddns.net
<VirtualHost>

and the only thing you need to change is the ServerName. Change it to the domain for your website.

ServerName yourdomain.com

ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com

and to host multiple websites on different domains, just add another entry starting with

<VirtualHost *:80>

and fill in the rest accordingly.

Setting up URL

If you do not have a domain, then get a free one 

Google noip and you will find a free domain name service, add a new host and you are good to go.

Do not change any settings, just specify the domain name and your public IP

Find your public IP by searching "my ip" on google and it should look like

• 63.248.288.16

and you will get a sub domain like below from noip

• iamawesome.ddns.net

This is the URL you will put in your configuration

Setting up Port Forwarding

Go to your router's configuration page, it is usually

192.168.0.1

or

192.168.1.1

Under QoS or NAT, there is a port forwarding option

Forward port from 80 to 80
to IP of your Banana Pi

Google this if you do not get it. It is self explanatory, but it may be confusing. I am not really in the mood to write a guide for every router in the world:)

Going to Your Website on Chrome or FireFox or Spartan(you know what)

 Open up your browser and type in the noip address without "www"

Hope you enjoyed my horrible humor

and i am not telling you to like my blog or my channel, but please do it if you don't feel like it.
https://plus.google.com/+projectbananapiblogspotz/about