Turning a MacBook Pro into a forum Server using Apache?

[NYNick]

I have a 2007 MacBook Pro. I was wondering if it were possible to turn it into a server using Apache. Also, if I used Apache to turn my computer into a server, would it be compatible with SMF or vBulletin and able to host one of these softwares? Thanks in advance

 

[SilentPanda]

Your Mac should be fine. You might install MAMP to get up and running.

http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html

You can host a forum of some sort on there but if you plan on doing something huge then you'll need something more beefy long term. But to just play around you should be fine. Also keep in mind a fair amount of ISPs don't like people running a website off of their services.

 

[Lanbrown]

Amazing what you can find at the developers site:
http://www.vbulletin.com/faqsales.php

What are the system requirements for vBulletin?

Minimum Requirements: vBulletin is designed to run on every server that has PHP 4.3.3 or greater and MySQL 4.0.16 or greater installed.

It is recommended to use PHP 4.4.2 or 5.1.2, or later and MySQL 5.0.19 or later.

The software has been successfully installed on several different flavours of UNIX, as well as Windows™ 98/NT/2000/XP, and the Mac

Note: We recommend you contact your hosting provider to verify that they have the correct versions of PHP and MySQL installed. If you administrate your own server, PHP and MySQL are available for free download from php.net and mysql.com.

 

[rgarjr]

Yeah pretty much any computer can be used as a server nowadays. Yeah like the SilentPanda mentioned, a lot of ISP will shut your service down if you're running a server and putting some bandwidth strain on their network.