Initially you may feel that it is difficult task to host your own website. In practical it is very simple and you should just sacrifice your computer.
All clear:
Initially you should erase the entire content on your computer so make sure to remove the valuable data from your computer. If you take help from the hosting company also thing will be there.
Take your pick:
It is not recommended to make use of laptops in this case because they should be used for certain period of time. The desktop you are choose should be kept running all the time in this case. The kind of desktop and processor is not considered but it should be a good machine.
Serve it well:
Host your website on your machine for free and you should not skip this procedure. Initially you should install a web server application. Among the various options apache is considered as the best option. You will be asked certain things while the web server application is set up. The major things to consider is domain name and IP address of the DNS server. If you don’t use domain name then leave that column.
Copy it:
Here you need to copy the contents of your website in the website files folder which is specified while installation. Thereby this folder is accessed to everyone on the internet.
Routing the server:
This is the final stage in the process of hosting your website. In this forwarding of port 80 is configured. You need not think about this if you are not using router. If you are not using domain name then you can give IP address to your users.