Want a personal Web site, but don't want to pay monthly hosting fees? Then think about using a free Web hosting services.
If you're one of the growing
number of people who publish Web pages or cobble together
Web sites, you've probably learned one lesson: you can't get
enough space for your content, because, let's face it, with
Java, graphics, and multimedia content, even a small Web site
can eat up megabytes of storage.
But getting that extra space can be difficult for several
reasons. Sometimes you only need a cheap place to hang your hat online. Or, maybe you can't afford full service from your Internet
Service Provider (ISP). Or, maybe you just need a way to host your Web site cheaply. There's a way to do it that costs you
nothing. It's called free Web hosting, and as the name implies, you pay nothing for your Web space.
Why Free Web Hosting?
Free Web hosting has a lot going for it. The most important
aspect is the cost. How else can you get a place to dump your
Web pages without paying a cent? A free hosting service is
perfect for someone who can't afford a full-fledged Internet
account or who accesses the Web using a public terminal or a
FreeNet. Depending on the service you choose, you can get
anywhere from 3 MB to 35 MB of storage space. Many ISPs don't
offer that much. If they do, the extra space can get quite
expensive.
Of course, there's the convenience of it all. You can do just
about everything you need to with a free Web hosting service.
Most give you access to an online HTML editor and to some
sort of file management tool. While the latter allows you to
delete or rename files, but generally little else, the HTML
editors are quite useful. They range from a simple workspace
into which you type your code and content, to editors that
insert HTML tags with a mouse click, to fully-fledged
graphical tools that let you build pages by pointing and
clicking.
Best of all, transferring your files from your computer to
any free hosting service is easy. Most have an interface for
transferring files. Or, you can use good old-fashioned FTP to
move your files around. There's no learning curve for
experienced Web users. You simply do as you have always done.
If you're wondering about a service to choose, here's a quick
peek at some of the services out there:
Yahoo! GeoCities
Yahoo! GeoCities is one of the oldest free hosting services. And
it's one of the most popular. How popular? Well, it has a
huge international user base. And it's so popular that
there's a book titled Creating GeoCities Web sites. It's the
only published guide to putting together Web pages for a
specific free hosting service that I've seen.
What sets Yahoo! GeoCities apart from its competitors is the
service's file management capabilities and the PageBuilder
Web authoring tool. The Yahoo! GeoCities file manager gives
you full control over your files -- as much as, or more than,
you have with the file manager in your operating system. With
it, you can delete, copy, rename, preview, edit, and upload
files with only a few clicks. PageBuilder is an advanced
point-and-click HTML editor that has capabilities rivalling
those of many commercial HTML authoring tools. Using
PageBuilder you can position any element on your Web pages,
then preview the page. There is also a set of add-ons that
insert buttons, graphics, lines, and counters into a
document.
In the past, you were forced to pigeonhole your site into a Yahoo! GeoCities
"neighbourhood," based on your area of interest. That was pretty annoying, but in recent years this hasn't been the case. Why? The URLs were long, and required a lot of typing.
Angelfire
Angelfire is a solid service that has some
nice features, but which can also be quite annoying. The nice
features include a pair of easy-to-use HTML editors. One lets
you type in your HTML code; perfect for the experienced Web
builder. The other editor is more of a wizard aimed at the
newbie. With it, you can choose a pre-defined layout, as well
as specify the colours to use on your pages. You can also
pick graphics, set up a list of links, and type in some body
text. Best of all, you can arrange where on the page these
elements will appear. You don't get as much control as you
would with the code-based editor but it's a good way to
quickly get up and running.
What I found annoying about Angelfire is that it insists all
Web page files have the extension .html. This is fine if
you're building from scratch, but not so good if you're
moving your files from another location. You may have to
change the file names and any internal links.
NetColony
Like Angelfire, NetColony is a simply but solid service. NetColony recommends its free hosting for personal and what it calls "business brochure sites", so it's well suited for most needs.
While NetColony offers for-pay hosting, with many frills, its free service is pretty basic. You get 100 MB of space for your Web site files, as well as a personalized e-mail address. On top of that, NetColony has a WYSIWYG page builder that enables you to create and edit the pages of your site without having to know HTML and without needing to transfer files to and from your PC.
When you sign up for your NetColony account, you get to choose the URL for your Web site. Well, within reason. You're stuck with http://www.netcolony.com/(site name), for example, http://www.netcolony.com/mySite. But you do get to specify information about your site, like its title, some keywords (for search engines), and a brief description of the site. You can also tell NetColony what your skill with Web design is (beginner/intermediate/expert), and choose whether you want to use the service's templates to build your site or if you will do the job the old fashioned way.
NetColony's technical support isn't bad, but for the free service it's only available online. On the other hand, the 100MB of space that NetColony provides is plenty, even for multimedia files like video and music.
How Free is Free?
Whoever coined the phrase "you can't get something for
nothing" had pegged free Web hosting services correctly.
While you're not laying out any cash, you do have to make one
concession -- advertising banners which appear whenever
someone surfs to your site. You've probably seen them in your
travels on the Web, either as pop-up windows or ads embedded
at the top of a Web page. Advertisements are annoying, but they are a
necessary evil. That's because the serviced rely on the
support of advertisers and sponsors to help make them free.
To set up an account, you'll probably have to give the
service of your choice some personal information -- address,
telephone number, age, etc. It's another necessary evil, but
on with which you may not feel comfortable.
Free Web hosting services give you an excellent opportunity
to create a presence on the Web. Not only can't you beat the
price, but you'll find that these services offer a number of
features that even the best ISPs lack. While there are
aspects of them that leave much to be desired, you may find
that using a free hosting service is the fastest and cheapest
way to get your message out there.