Finding
Free Web Hosting
Free Web Page Hosts with No Banner Ads?
Looking for free web site hosting with no annoying
pop-ups, pop-unders, buttons, banners, headers or footers? And as
well as this, you'd like 99.8 percent up-time, fast servers, access
to the cgi-bin for scripts, FP extensions, PHP and MySQL databases
and FTP access?
We went out searching for the best "no ads" totally free
site hosting space deals around. The results: disappointing, they
are very few and far between. Many have come and gone, or as in
the case of Bizland, quite suddenly withdrawn their free service
and demanded that all their customers begin paying. We took a look
at the promotional information for over 300 free web hosting companies,
but then also looked at customer reviews. There was usually a major
difference in opinions.
There is still a plethora of free web hosts around, but most require
that you carry their advertising or offer you a limited time for
the free service, usually a year. On the up side of this, many of
these companies do supply quality hosting with many services in
exchange for having their banners served up on your pages. We did
find that many of the non-banner supported free options were hosted
on very slow servers. In a number of cases, the server failed to
respond at all!
How do non-banner free hosting companies make their money?
These companies try to survive by enticing the freebie customers
to take out their paid hosting space options, which is fair enough.
Quite often, their paid hosting options are quite cheap. You'll
find that if you utilise this kind of free site hosting, the services
available are rather limited and you'll need to pay for things like
Front Page extensions and access to the cgi-bin for scripts. The
other way that they survive is through regular newsletters containing
offers from companies that pay them for the ad space.
Strategies in using non-banner supported free hosting options
One of the common patterns for these companies is that when they
first set up shop, customer support is fantastic, server response
times are great, shared scripts function well and file transfer
interfaces are reliable. But as time goes on, "gold fever"
hits, and people begin flocking to these companies with inevitable
results - things start slowing down and falling over.
If you do find yourself in the position of needing to use free
space due to financial restrictions; here's a couple of things you
can do:
Buy a domain name first
Register a domain name first - Many domain name registrars give
you a stack of free services with each name registered. Costs for
domain name registrations can be as little as US$10-$12 per year.
One of the services that you want to look for is a domain name control
panel and free http/URL forwarding or framing. This allows you to
redirect the name as you wish, changing it's destination every day
if you want to! If your free web hosting provider goes belly up
or isn't functioning correctly, you can move your site to another
provider and redirect the domain name to point towards it.
A word of warning - be very careful who you register your domain
name with. We recently assisted a client who registered a domain
name for a couple of dollars, but had very little control over the
name without having paying huge fees to the registrar. It took approximately
2 months to wrest control away from the rabid registrar and transfer
the name to a more ethical company. Always read the fine print.
What if I can't afford a domain name?
You could always use a free, no-banner, no-popup URL/HTTP redirection
service from providers such as:
http://www.shorturl.com/
http://www.has.it/home.php
http://www.ipfox.com/home.html
The only issue with using these free URL redirection providers
is the question of continuity of service. Also bear in mind that
when it comes to being listed on the search engines, nothing beats
having your own domain commercially hosted, rather than a redirection
to one.
Free web space may be right under your nose!
When you sign up for Internet access, it is not uncommon for you
also to get some free web space thrown in with the deal. We receive
10 megs of space, including Front Page extensions from our Internet
Service Provider which has been invaluable for creating a mirror
/ backup version of Taming the Beast.net. Email your ISP to check
out what is available to you.
Ok, back to non advertising supported, free web hosting options.
While we won't personally recommend any as we haven't used them
and there were too many conflicting views, the following free hosting
directories may assist you in finding some no frills, no banner
web space. Remember to read the fine print before signing up for
any service:
Recommended free web space directory:
http://www.free-webhosts.com/
This is a searchable database directory of over 1,200 free webspace
hosts with reviews and ratings, updated daily. It is by far the
largest and best directory of free webspace.
The advanced search is at:
http://www.free-webhosts.com/power-search.php
For listing all free hosts with no ads (currently about 60), go
to:
http://www.free-webhosts.com/no-forced-ads.php
Looking for free file storage space?
http://www.freewebspace.net/guide /diskstorage.shtml
If you know of a good free web host that doesn't require their
banners to be shown, we'd love to hear from you!
About the Author Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources
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