Kevin's Watch

Hey folks, just a quick question for all you web-junkies...

I'm thinking of putting up a little static website, just a few pages. Wanted to know if anybody knows of any decent free hosting sites/whatever, or if I'd do better just paying for it.

Any suggestions gratefully considered.

Thanks

--A

Hi Avatar!

Many free hosting sites will foist advertising onto your visitors, usually by way of pop-up advertisements. Although many of these can be routinely blocked bypop-up blockers these days, that still misses the point. Some can get round pop-up blockers anyway.

Check to see whether your own ISP offers an amount of free hosting space. That's the first place to start.

I struck that one lucky because for me, some time after I set mine up, they changed the way it works such that newser sites are framed in a frameset of ugly advertising. Not only do they mess with the look and feel of the site, but the use of frames makes it harder for search engines to spider (so you don't get many results in Google).

I would go for a host that allows at least some server-side scripting, especially SSIs (Server-Side Includes). This would allow you to re-use code for your headers and footers, for example, even if you're not wanting to use a database.

If you know HTML, I'd recommend building the pages yourself rather than using a tool such as FrontPage or FrontPage Express, the reason being that those tools tend to generate huge, bloated, often proprietary code that is unreadable and browser-specific. I've seen sites fail to render on other browsers than Internet Explorer because of this.

Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. If you don't may anything, don't expect much (in terms of space, capability, and freedom from insidious advertising).

I know this is overkill, but I've used 34sp.com, and I've been pretty pleased with the service. It's a paid solution offering the following for £17.95 per year (you'll have to pay a domain name registration fee as well).

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I've been checking, and you definitely get what you pay for.

Luckily I can make the pages myself, and I've found a reasonably good review site that lists the pros and cons and features of a good few free hosts.

Luckily, I'm not in much of a rush...lots of other things to think about and sort out first. Decided to take care of as much of that as possible that before rushing to get a site up.

Depending on the outcome of that, may just pay for a little hosting. Otherwise, start with a free one and move to a paid one when it's worth it.

Thanks for the advice.

--A

Avatar, would you mind posting links to those sites that offer comparisons?
The luxury I've had at work to use thier web hosting is going away soon and I'm looking to go out on my own soon.

Angoid, lots of good tips. Thanks!

Free Web Hosts

(Lemme know if you choose one of them and how it works out. )

--A

The Award Space one looks good: no forced advertisements, you can code in PHP, Perl, and use SSIs, and you also get a MySQL database (very popular and worth having if you want to get into that stuff).

You also get an FTP account, meaning you can use your own FTP program to upload your pages.

Only downside is that you don't have SMTP access, meaning you can't use a program such as Outlook Express or Thunderbird to send mails (although you can receive as POP is supported).

Subdomains can be useful as well if you want to segregate things:

subdomain1.yourmaindomain.com
subdomain2.yourmaindomain.com
...
subdomain5.yourmaindomain.com

for instance, if you want a forum - however, 10MB for the database might prove restrictive if you want a forum.

But for a simple site, it looks pretty good

Thanks, I'll bear it in mind.

Vain has put me onto one that looks good too. To start with, a simple site will be fine. If it ever needs something like a forum, then paid hosting will be justified.

--A

It's worth getting a host with MySQL, PHP, Perl and all that just in case, even if you don't intend to use it at the time. FTP is a must.

Thanks. I'll definitely bear it in mind.

--A