Webupon

It’s what everyone wants, a little piece of the web for a personal page but everyone knows that serious web hosting costs money. What you want is web hosting that doesn’t cost anything so here’s an explanation of what free web hosting is on offer and some advice on how to choose and use it.

ISP Space

This dates to the golden days when the web was just beginning and an ISP would dish out space if you signed up. This was usually a small area on the server in which to host your home page, for disk space was anything but cheap in those days. However, it gave you enough for a couple of pages and a few simple graphics.

As the web has grown this space has increased but, for most ISPs it’s never very generous. However, it does offer completely free web hosting so the first place to look when considering starting your website is to your ISP to see if you’ve already got space allocated.

If you find that you have space then you might also find free software there to help you make your pages. Often this is quite adequate to make a personal page and a few more pages beside.

Free Web Hosting

Search in your favourite search engine for ‘free web hosting’ and you’ll be overwhelmed with results!

But, before you dash off to sign up, think why a company that owes you no favours and who doesn’t ask for money is offering you all this free space. Is it out of the goodness of their hearts?

Usually, I’m afraid, it’s not. They know that there’s a market for free sites and they also know that they can use people’s pages as a billboard on which to generate revenue from adverts.

This means you’re usually not allowed to put your own adverts on the pages and so this stops you using free hosting to make money. Of course, this is fair enough as you’re not paying for it but remember, too, that you have no control over the advertisements they use.

The point is that you may well find that the adverts are not the ones that you or your visitors will enjoy or want to see and may even put people off.

On the other hand, some web hosts offer you free space so you can build up your website and then, once you get popular and your bandwidth starts to get used up, they move you to paid hosting.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with this but make sure you know exactly what you’re getting and when, and in what circumstances, the free hosting ends.

If you get a domain name make sure, too, that you know how easy it is to transfer it if you decide to move.

Free Web Hosting With No Strings

Can this be true? Yes, it can and you’ll be surprised to learn that Microsoft offer it. If all you want is a personal page where you can list some of the things that make you what you are and maybe write a few lines from time to time for your friends, then Live Spaces might be for you.

Live Spaces offers a page that’s customizable – within limits – and where you can have a variety of lists, blogs and photographs. In fact, it’s all that a lot of people want and it’s available at no charge with no third party advertising and, in fact, you can even use the ready-made facilities to make money for yourself!

OK, if we are going to allow Live Spaces then we must let in free blogging services like Blogger. These give you a page (sometimes more but not with Blogger) and you can add your own content or, on some, your own adverts and all for free. This makes a simple yet useful personal page where friends can visit and where you can write a few lines each day to chronicle your life.

If you want just a personal page where you can write your thoughts and have a presence on the web then a free blog site may well suit you or a ‘Live Spaces’ type of site where you can do a little more.

If you want a proper website or want to learn how to produce websites then you need a proper free host. In this case your first call is to your ISP. If there’s no luck here then try free web hosting but be careful to make sure you know what you’re getting – both now and in the future!