The following web server presents one of many different ways of setting up Raspberry Pi as a web server. Set-up requires the following in addition to a small computer:
- SD card on which the operating system Raspbian is set up
- An internet connection— through a network cable (recommended) or WiFi
- Power supply through a micro USB cable
Given that web servers are headless (i.e. they operate without screens or input devices), which in turn makes them energy efficient, it’s best to also set up a remote access option via SSH. With the help of a SSH client (such as PuTTY, WinSCP) for Windows or OpenSSH for Unix operating systems, users are able to easily set up and make changes to web servers from a computer, a smartphone, or other devices. For those who have decided to administer their servers via SSH, enter your Raspberry Pi’s IPv4 address into your SSH client in order to connect the two with one another. In case you don’t know your Raspberry Pi’s address, you can call it up in the terminal with the command hostname –l (or alternatively with ifconfiq). For those using a headless Raspberrry Pi set-up, you can find out its address through your router by calling up your web browser (generally under "http://192.168.0.1")
Those looking to use the webs server for a private cloud or another application, which also need more storage space, should expand their storage capacity. With Raspberry Pi, this can be done quite easily via a USB storage stick or an external hard drive.