Sunday, December 28, 2008

Considerations when Choosing Free Web Hosting

By Theodore Metagastar

Thinking about starting your own website? The good news is that free web hosting is available at many sites. There are many things to consider before you make this decision and investing your time and energy in building your site.

Think about the purpose of your website. Do you want community? Want to stay in touch with your friends? Then you should check out Facebook and Myspace. These sites are social networking sites. There are many of these sites operating today, so check with your friends to see where they are already hosted.

Are you looking for good hosting for your photo you might want to check out Flicker, though the social networking sites will serve you as well in displaying many photos.

Many of the free web space hosts give you options such as templates and add on features. What they offer will vary depending on the host.

If you are interested in displaying Adsense advertisements and possibly generate a little revenue to support your website then you might consider Blogspot. This site is owned by Google, and they do allow Adsense ad blocks to be shown on these sites.

One of the disadvantages of a free web space is the name of your website. Though you will have a little creative latitude on a portion of the name, it will always contain your free web space domain name as well. One example of this is http://atravel-adventure.blogspot.com. The host domain is blogspot, with the subdomain atravel-adventure.

If you are dead set on having your own domain name, one likehttp://afreewebspace.com, , you will need to arrange for a hosting service, which steps you out of the free hosting level into paid hosting. The great thing about paid hosting is that you can host multiple sites and will have greater latitude in what features you can have for your site. Your own site can be set up with basic html pages, or use a content management system, which we will discuss in our next article.

If you find that the free web space hosting you have is not going to serve you for your new ideas and creative endeavors, you can always create your next site elsewhere and put links to your new site on the free hosting site. This way your people can follow you, and the search engines will find you much easier.

One of the advantages of having a free web space is storage of your photo and ideas. Having an offsite storage place for your memories can save a lot of heartache in the event of a computer crash.

Free web space hosting is here to stay. Isnt it time you start your own website? - 16069

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