But once the machine is set up and running, you may find that the slow or unreliable connection at home is not enough for you. Power outages, theft or slow upload speeds can be barriers when hosting at home. If you want a more reliable server, you’ll probably want to consider a data center to host your machine.

In a data center, you are paying mostly for the space. It can get quite expensive to host a full server. But with the small size of the Mac mini, you can colocate your server for much less.

I’ve mentioned from the beginning that I work with Macminicolo.net. We host hundreds of Mac minis as servers and that is how I’ve become familiar with the setup of these machines. In this video, I answer the most common questions asked and walk thru the signup process. Hopefully, this will show you hosting in a data center doesn’t need to be intimidating or expensive.

Watch it here: Getting The Mini In A Data Center

Shownotes:
- Macminicolo.net
- Server Video Series

I’ll be happy to answer any more questions here or from the Macminicolo.net contact page.

On the remote (controlled) computer you’ll need a VNC server, such as the free Vine Server, or you can turn on “Apple Remote Desktop” under the System Preferences Sharing pane.

On the local (controlling) computer, you’ll need a VNC client like the free Chicken of the VNC.

To create the SSH tunnel, you’ll need the free application JellyfiSSH (if you don’t want to type the SSH commands in the Terminal yourself.)

Watch it here: How to create an SSH tunnel for a secure VNC connection

Watch It Here: Configure Two IP Addresses on One Mac

Show Notes:

• Hosting Multiple Websites On One Mac
• Macminicolo.net – Host Your Mac Mini in a data center. Starting at $34.99
• Tabstop – You may have noticed that when I tried to close my Safari window with multiple tabs, I was given a warning. That was thanks to Tabstop.

Video Link: How To Monitor The Bandwidth on your Mac mini server

Shownotes:

-SurplusMeter – A free application that will allow you to see how much bandwidth your machine is using.
-Macminicolo.net – Macminicolo.net provides the bandwidth and hosting for these tutorials. Once you have your machine set up to run as a server, you may consider hosting it in the macminicolo data center. Starting at $34.99 you are provided with reliable power, a 100mb connection, and a static ip address. More on pricing can be found here.

Note: I am the one that manages all of the minis in the macminicolo data center.

This video tutorial shows you how to install wordpress by using MAMP. It’s very simple.

Movie Link: Install WordPress On Your Mac Using MAMP

Shownotes:
- MAMP- Our post on FreeMacWare explaining MAMP
- WordPress.org- the free wordpress install
-Macminicolo.net- turn your Mac mini into a server and share your blog with the world

• Over on FreeMacWare today, I wrote about a program called Lithium. It’s an incredibly app that I saw at Macworld. It monitors remote computers and servers so you can keep tab on them. If you are running a Mac mini as a server, this will be a good way to monitor it. And lucky for us, they offer a free “Lite Version” that will only limit the amount of machines you can monitor.
• The most requested video tutorial is how to set up a mail server on your Mac mini. We’ve been working on it, but it’s much more in depth than you’d think. But, we don’t blame you for hesitating to spend the $500 on Mac OS X Server just to get a mail server. Over on MacSoftwareReviews.com, I’ve posted about an app called Postfix Enabler. It’s a very well done app that will set up a very capable mail server in about 60 seconds and it’s under $10. That is a very good way to go.
• My company just finished the week at Macworld. We had a booth there and were able to meet a ton of great people. (including some of you) As part of our Macworld week, we offered Macworld attendees a discounted price to get their Mac mini in our data center. We took our most popular package, waived the sign-up fee and discounted it by $10 per month. I thought I’d extend that same offer to the FreeMacBlog readers. If you were waiting for the right time to get your Mac mini into the data center, now would be a good time. You can take advantage of that discount here. It should be good for another week or so.

Alright, that’s what I have for you right now. There will be more videos coming soon. Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed so you’ll be notified when then come.

I apologize if I used any VPN terms wrong. I’m new to the use of VPN’s, but this video is complete in the set up and should have your new VPN up and running in no time.

Movie Link: Setting Up A VPN On A Mac with HamachiX

Shownotes:

- HamachiX – a free tool to set up a VPN on a Mac
- Macminicolo.net – Mac mini colocation service
- More on Virtual Private Networks – Wikipedia entry on VPN’s

If you are new to using Terminal, or Unix in general, you might consider keeping an eye on FreeMacUnix.com. Richard has started from the very beginning in his explanations on how to use Unix on your Mac.

Shownotes:

• Setting Up VNC On Your Server- an earlier tutorial that is referenced in this video.
• Chicken Of The VNC- VNC Client for controlling your Mac server
• Mac mini colocation

Video Link: Enable SSH On Your Mac Server

Watch it here: How to Host Multiple Web Sites on a Single Mac

Show Notes:

• Smultron text editor
• Apache Virtual Host documentation
• Mac Mini Colocation
• How To Set Up Just One Site on a Mac
• RSS feed for this Mac Server Video Series

Learning PHP and MySQL is a great way to learn web application development, and installing them is easy.

Watch here: How to setup PHP and MySQL on your Mac

Show Notes:

• Download PHP from Entropy.ch.
• Download MySQL from MySQL.com.
• If you just want to try them out, download MAMP (for testing and development only, not production.)
• Learn PHP with the PHP.net tutorial