This week, the YouTube tech channel PortEXE released a new Raspberry Pi project—a Node.js web server. The entire setup runs locally on the Raspberry Pi and is easily accessible from a browser window.
If you're unfamiliar, Node.js is an open-source platform designed to run JavaScript. In this case, PortEXE is using it to create a custom web server. This will allow him to host a website and other kinds of server-based applications exclusively on the Pi.
For his web server, PortEXE is using a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. You can run this project on older editions of the Pi, but will benefit from a considerable performance increase by using a Pi 4 with greater RAM capacity. The Node.js server is installed on top of the latest edition of Raspbian, now known as Raspberry Pi OS.
PortEXE recommends using Node Version Manager (NVM)—a Linux-based application used to install versions for Node.js. He used an application called Droppy for its file server functionality. Once set up, the file server was accessible via web browser using the local IP address for the Pi.
While you can easily set up a web server on a PC, this project takes everything and isolates it to a centralized device. The Pi can be easily monitored and rebooted without interfering with other PC functions. If you'd like to see more cool projects, you can check out PortEXE on his official YouTube channel. We also have a tutorial on how to setup your own Apache webserver, which you can see here.
