Self Hosting Your Website (Namecheap, Tomcat, Cloudflare)

I am going to describe the process of setting up a website, all the way from purchasing a domain name, to making it available online via your domain name.

There are several ways to accomplish the end goal, and I am willing to bet there is room for improvement here too, so do not assume that this is gospel by any means. If you find that I made a mistake somewhere or if something could be improved upon, feel free to let me know, and I will correct it and gladly give you credit.

This post is only going to focus on router configuration, web server configuration, DNS^* and TLS^*. It is not going to cover anything related to web development.

With that said, let us proceed with the setup!

Prerequisites

1. Create a Namecheap account and purchase a domain name - https://www.namecheap.com/

For the purpose of this tutorial, I am going to use my own domain name - rc03.net - to get my website up and running.

2. Create a Cloudflare account - https://dash.cloudflare.com/sign-up

3. Go to https://www.whatismyip.com/

Make a note of your external IP address. Do not share this with the outside world. The reason why we are using Cloudflare DNS is because it protects your appserver from DDoS attacks, and your external IP is not revealed by inspecting the network traffic. They also issue a free certificate to setup TLS.

4. Download the latest Amazon Corretto 8 JDK - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/corretto/latest/corretto-8-ug/downloads-list.html

5. Download and install KeyStore Explorer - https://github.com/kaikramer/keystore-explorer/releases/download/v5.4.2/kse-542-setup.exe

6. Download Tomcat - http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/apache/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.22/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.22.zip

Router Configuration

The first step to this process is router configuration. The only time to change it is if the internal IP of the appserver^* changes.

Most ISPs do not allow serving over port 80 or 443. Therefore, we will use port 8080 for HTTP and 8443 for TLS (HTTPS). The configuration is going to be similar for most routers. The idea is very simple, whenever a request comes in through port 8080 or port 8443, we want to send it to the appserver.

1. Find out of the internal IP address of machine that will be running the web server.

Run, "ipconfig" in command prompt. This will give you a lot information, but you are specifically looking for the IPv4 Address of the network adapter that is connected to the router. It looks something like this -

Make a note of this internal IP address.

2. Log into your router configuration webpage, and access the port forwarding section

3. Add two custom services that will redirect any traffic over ports 8080 and 8443 to the appserver. The end result should look something like this.

Port Forwarding Portmap table

This concludes the router configuration. Once we have a web server up and running, and its configured to serve on the aforementioned ports, the website can be accessed via the external IP address. It will not aliased to a domain name yet; DNS configuration needs to be completed for that to work.

Tomcat configuration

In this section we will setup Tomcat to serve the website over HTTP. Configuring HTTPS will be covered later in the tutorial. What follows is one of many ways of configuring the directory structure. Should you choose to buy another domain name, and self host it on the same machine, this directory structure would be convenient.

1. Create the following directory - MyWebsites on the root of C: or D: drive.

2. Create a directory inside MyWebsites with your domain name. Ex - D:\MyWebsites\rc03.net

3. Extract the contents of Tomcat into the domain directory. Ensure that the directory structure looks like this -

Startup script should be in this location - D:\MyWebsites\rc03.net\bin\startup.bat

4. Extra Java to the following path - D:\java\amazon-jdk1.8.0_222.
Ensure that the bin directory is in the following location - D:\java\amazon-jdk1.8.0_222\bin

This will serve as JAVA_HOME for Tomcat

5. Navigate to D:\MyWebsites\rc03.net\bin and create a batch file - setenv.bat

6. Open the batch file in a text editor and add the following contents to it -

set "JAVA_HOME=D:\java\amazon-jdk1.8.0_222"
exit /b 0


7. Navigate to the following directory - D:\MyWebsites\rc03.net\webapps\ROOT

8. Create an html file and name it index.html.

index.html will be the homepage for the website

9. Open index.html in a text editor and add the following code to it and save it -



10. Navigate to D:\MyWebsites\rc03.net\bin and run startup.bat. This should launch a command window, that looks like this -

11. Open a web browser, and type in the following url - http://localhost:8080. It should look like this -

At this point, your web server is serving over port 8080.

12. Now, it is important to test if the router configuration is working as expected. There are two ways to do this.

12.1. Go to - https://canyouseeme.org/
Your external IP address is already populated. Type in port 8080 in the text box and click on Check Port. This should be successful

This indicates that the router configuration is working and the HTTP port is open to the outside world.

[OPTIONAL]
12.2. Install Opera browser and enable VPN. Now access the following URL - http://[external-ip]:8080

This indicates that the website is accessible over the internet.

Congratulations! The website is now Live! We will now move on to DNS.

Namecheap Configuration

We will not be using Namecheap's DNS. Instead, we will configure Custom DNS, and point to Cloudflare's DNS servers.

1. Log into the Namecheap account.

2. Click on the Manage button corresponding to the domain name.

3. In the Nameservers section, select Custom DNS. Add these two nameservers -

kai.ns.cloudflare.com
leia.ns.cloudflare.com


Custom DNS configuration in Namecheap.

This concludes Namecheap configuration. Let's proceed to Cloudflare configuration.

Cloudflare Configuration

1. Log into the Cloudflare account.

2. Click on Add Site button.

3. Enter the website name and click on Add site.

4. Select the free plan.

5. At this point, Cloudflare should be able to automatically detect DNS records.

6. If Cloudflare does not detect any DNS records, then add the following key records -

The A records should point to the external IP address.

NOTE - Ensure that Cloudflare HTTP proxy is enabled for the A records. If its not enabled, the external IP address of the app server will be public.

7. Save the DNS configuration.

8. Access the website URL using the DNS name and port number.

http://rc03.net:8080

This concludes DNS configuration. The website is serving over HTTP. I recommend setting up TLS so that the website can be accessed using HTTPS.

TLS Configuration

This is by far the most complicated and time consuming part of setting up a website. I tried to use Java keytool, but I have been unsuccessful. I will write another article on using the keytool when I figure it out. Until then, I am going to stick to using KeyStore Explorer.

Assuming that the router configuration is done exactly as described above, the web server will use 8443 port to serve over TLS. There are two parts to enabling TLS, generating a KeyStore that contains the identity keypair and public certificate, and configuring Tomcat to consume the KeyStore and serve over TLS.

Generating a KeyStore

1. Log into the Cloudflare account.

2. Click on Crypto tab.

3. Navigate down to Origin Certificates and click on Create Certificate.

4. In the next modal window, configure it as shown below -

5. Select PKCS #7 as the Key Format for Origin Certificate. Copy the text, paste it into a text editor and save it as - rc03-public-cert.p7b

Copy the text for the private key, paste it into a text editor and save it as rc03-private-key.pfx

6. Start KeyStore Explorer and select the option to create a new JKS KeyStore.

7. Click on Import Key Pair button, and select PKCS #8 format.

8. Browse to the private key and public cert and click Import.

9. Enter the alias.

10. Enter the password for the key pair and click OK.

This should successfully import the private key pair.

11. Click on the Set KeyStore password button and set the password.

12. Save the KeyStore.

Tomcat Configuration

1. Shut down the Tomcat web server if it is running.

2. Navigate to D:\MyWebsites\rc03.net\conf

3. Copy and paste the keystore file (rc03-keystore.jks) in this directory

4. Open server.xml in a text editor

5. Navigate to SSL/TLS section, and add the following configuration -

server.xml with TLS configuration.

6. Start the web server by running D:\MyWebsites\rc03.net\bin\startup.bat

7. Once the server is up and running, access the following URL - https://rc03.net:8443
This should be successful.

This concludes setting up TLS.

Conclusion

Once all the setup is done, the website can be as simple or complicated as needed. For a simple website, any low spec old desktop or laptop will do the job. I would imagine that self hosting is cheaper than paid hosting, but I did not do any cost analysis. The advantage of self hosting is that its a great learning experience, and it allows for greater control over hardware.

If you found this helpful, please leave a comment.

Legend

appserver - machine that is running the web server (tomcat).
DNS - Domain Name System. Its a way to map a name to a computer.
TLS - Transport Layer Security. Its commonly known as SSL (Secure Socket Layer)

Registry Key Error When Running java -version In Windows

Running "java -version" command on a Windows machine might get the following error -

C:\>java -version
Error: opening registry key 'Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment'
Error: could not find java.dll
Error: Could not find Java SE Runtime Environment.


Error when running "java -version".

The fix is fairly simple. Type the following command -

where java

The output might be something similar -

C:\>where java
C:\Windows\System32\java.exe
D:\java\jdk-11.0.3\bin\java.exe


Determine all the places where java.exe shouldn't exist. In my case, its the System32 folder. Navigate to the folder(s) and move the different java executable files out of the directory into a temp directory.

java.exe
javaw.exe
javaws.exe


Move the executable files out of the directory.

Run "java -version" command again, and this time it should give the right version based on the environment variables on the machine.

Connecting to Linux AWS EC2 using Putty and Running a Web Server

Here are the steps to connect to your EC2 instance using PuTTY. I am assuming that you have the private key downloaded, and you have all the information for the EC2 instance handy (public IP, dns name etc.). The private key you get from AWS is .pem format, which needs to be converted into .ppk format to allow accessing the instance with PuTTY.

Convert AWS Private Key (.pem) to PuTTY Private Key File (.ppk)

1. Launch PuTTYgen application from Start menu

2. Ensure that the Parameters are set the following values

3. Load the private key that for the instance that was generated by Amazon and Click OK

4. Click OK om the following dialog box

5. Now click on Save private key option on PuTTYgen

I did not add a passphrase to my private key file. Add a passphrase to the private key if you deem necessary. A save dialog box is shown. Enter an appropriate name, and save the file. The file is saved in .ppk format. This can be used with PuTTY to ssh into the EC2 instance

Connecting to your Linux instance using PuTTY

1. Start PuTTY from the Start Menu

2. In the left nav, click on Session

NOTE - For Amazon Linux 2 or Amazon Linux AMI, the username is ec2-user. Click here for more information.

2.1. Configure the connection details

Host Name: username@public_dns_name

2.2. (Optional) Configure keepalives. Click on Connection, and set the value as needed

2.3. Expand, SSH and select Auth. Click on the Browser button and navigate to the location where the private key generated by PuTTY, and click Open

Now click Open on the PuTTY Configuration window

2.4. There is a security alert. If you trust the fingerprint (which I do), click Yes

If everything is done right, the connection should be successful, and the following terminal window will be displayed.

Running a Web server

Now that SSH connection has been established, we will move on to updating the OS, and installing packages necessary for running a web server.

1. Type the following command in the terminal window -

sudo yum update -y

This will run all the necessary updates for your OS.

2. To install Apache on the instance, type the following -

sudo yum install httpd -y

At this point, the EC2 instance is capable of being an app server that can serve web pages on Apache.

3. Access the html directory in the web server directory by typing the following -

cd /var/www/html

Anything that lives in this directory will be accessible over port 80. In other words, this the directory out of which your website will be served.

4. Now, we will add an index.html to this directory using nono text editor. Type the following -

sudo nano index.html

This will open the text editor and allow you to add contents to index.html. Type the contents as shown.

Now, press Ctrl + X and press Y to save the file, and press Enter to save the file as index.html. Ensure that the file exists by running the ls command.

5. Start the service by typing -

sudo service httpd start

6. Now access the public ip address of the instance through the browser, and you should see the following -

Credit goes to AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2019 on udemy along with some tutorials I found. If you found this post helpful, be sure to thank the folks at CloudGuru.