I am new to this topic and was just watching a tutorial and the dude said you would have to buy and monthly pay for a domain.

I get that you would want someone else to host your website for IT-security reasons. Which is really not expensive.

But say I want to just access my server data like my music, my images and videos from anywhere and I know how to make a website. The domain name is not important for me, I dont need it to be fancy. Do I always have to buy a right to use a (unspecific but fixed) domain?

How does it work? Thanks!

Edit1: (to specify) I read that hosting the website yourself is not safe. I want to let someone host my website, serve data (like images and videos) to this website or to the client from my home-server.

CodePudding user response：

A domain is just an entry in the worldwide DNS servers. This makes it easier to find your server(s). You do not need to have one. Instead you can use your IP address that you 'get' from your ISP. You must make sure that your router, that you got from your ISP, directs the request to your server.

An other means is that you find a free redirect service like dyndns. They give you a servername that will redirect automatically to your IP address given by your ISP.

If you let someone host your website then he will provide you with a URL under which you can access your server. In fact this is not a domain but a server in his domain. Hosting your website that runs on your desktop can be unsafe. If you use a dedicated cheap server than it is less unsafe but complete safety is, unfortunately, not possible.