Setting up an SMTP Server

You're going to need a domain name before anything else, otherwise no-one is going to know who you are or where to find you; that is, your mail and web servers need a name that is mapped to a public IP address or addresses.

However, it would help to know what you're trying to achieve in order to offer more detailed advice.

Will your ISP allow you to host your own mail and web servers? Some don't...

Hello,

I can get the domain name, no problem about that. My provider will allow me to do it cause it's for my personal education purposes, I want to start a mail server+web with the help of my static IP address. I actually have a Windows 2008 Server, do you think it would be easy to setup it when i have the domain name? Do you have the step-by-step?

Thank you

There are various flavours of Windows 2008 Server, as can be seen here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/server-cloud/windows-server/2008-r2-editions.aspx

... but you will note that it isn't a mail server. For that role, Microsoft have Exchange Server.

Windows Small Business Server 2008 (and currently SBS 2011) includes Exchange and the ability to act as a web server too, but has certain limitations commensurate with its intended market. However, learning to use it is a good way to get a basic understanding of how Windows domains, web servers, and the Exchange mail server platform work.

If money is tight and you can't get hold of a copy of SBS 2008 or later, you'll have to look at third party products for email experience, or even experiment with older versions of Windows server such as SBS 2003 to get a feel for the disciplines involved in server configuration and management. The latter product is now appearing on sites such as Ebay (often with hardware included) for very modest sums, because MS is pulling support next year for XP and all varieties of Windows Server 2003, and the hardware it runs on is modest by today's standards.

I tried 1 thing on windows XP, since the static ip is routed, i installed wamp server then i put there an index.html file the problem is when i try to navigate using my ip via google chrome it says :

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Note that I disabled my windows xp firewall... anyway i'm just testing, any idea? I wanna keep it simple.

I want to let you know that this worked with an FTP server ran on the top of my Win XP and i put a file and my friend could download that file using my ip address as FTP server IP and i assigned him a username/pass on that application and everything went good. I don't know if this could be done with Wamp server as WebServer, any idea?

thank you

byebye Win2008server it really worked with wamp