Free Hosting

webman · #1 (**permalink**) 04-30-2008, 11:35 PM

I totally understand that free hosting for your website/blog can be limited(ya get what you pay for)

unprofessional(www.yourname.host.com or www.hosting.com/yourname)

unpredictable(Lisa's plight),

and even useless for making good money(Geocities or AOL).

But what kinda scared me was Lisa's article on free websites. The area where she said "search engines often ignore them" Is that regardless if you spam or not?

I once typed in a keyphrase and was astonished to find my site ranked number four(yet it's not that popular

).

The reason i'm asking because I'm a little tight on cash right now.

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 05-01-2008, 08:51 AM

The main reason free sites get ignored is not completely because it's on a free provider. Let's face it... if you can get enough quality backlinks and make the site popular then I'm sure you can get traffic. The problem is most people that start off with free providers aren't serious and don't maintain their site so it never gets noticed. But I still have a gut feeling that the search engines look down on free hosts in some way.

Just my opinion. I could be wrong though.

webman · #3 (**permalink**) 05-01-2008, 08:47 PM

Quote:

But I still have a gut feeling that the search engines look down on free hosts in some way.

Just my opinion. I could be wrong though.

Do you think it also has something to do with what free server you've got(example: Wordpress.com as opposed to Geocities)?

lisa · #4 (**permalink**) 05-01-2008, 10:31 PM

I do have a feeling they have red flags for certain domains. Definitely.

Lajocar · #5 (**permalink**) 05-02-2008, 08:52 AM

I agree with Lisa,

Free web hosting is not the best way to nowadays. Besides hosting is now so cheap.

Haleet · #6 (**permalink**) 05-02-2008, 01:49 PM

Well, not all of the free providers are that bad. I mean abiously u can't make money from a hosting from geocities or somee.com or something but sometimes they make a lot of trafic. Blogspot is my favorite for blogging and it makes a lot of traffic.

lisa · #7 (**permalink**) 05-02-2008, 08:28 PM

Blogger and WordPress would definitely be exceptions to the rule. (Especially since Google owns Blogger...LOL) But you still should at least have your own domain if you're going to use either one.

TechieGuy · #8 (**permalink**) 05-02-2008, 08:38 PM

I agree about Blogger and Wordpress. Search engines love blogs, and with a large portion of them being in one of those two platforms.

I agree that you should have your own domain name.

webman · #9 (**permalink**) 05-02-2008, 09:52 PM

Thanks for your inputs you guys...

Zander Ned · #10 (**permalink**) 07-21-2008, 03:21 AM

Nice, i agree with you. Even if some host would offer it for free, the service should be at least acceptable. But it usually isn't. If one offers free lunch to the poor, that food must not be rotten. It's just common sense!
All hosts have to pay for the servers, bandwidth and other expenses, so better you search a budget host, i can also recommend you Drupalvaluehosting.com.

Jewel · #11 (**permalink**) 09-15-2008, 07:21 PM

Now that I know a little bit about site building, I would like to set up a website for our girl scout troop...something I can upload a calendar to and maybe upload pictures.

Of course since we are small not-for-profit I would like to go with free hosting...there is no need for us to rank in the search engines, it is just for us parents and girls. Also on that note, I would like to make some of it password protected.

Any recommendations for the free hosting?

James · #12 (**permalink**) 09-15-2008, 10:15 PM

I don't know of any good free hosts, but do you really need to go that route. As you will see from my signature, I do the website for our county Master Gardeners. My host, Dreamhost, allows unlimited hosting so I host the Master Gardener domain on my hosting program at no cost to the organization.

If you have a hosting program with unlimited hosting, or if someone else in your group does, you may have the same potential. As discussed in another thread, access to the domain can be limited from other domains being hosted if different people are involved.

Rob · #13 (**permalink**) 09-16-2008, 12:48 AM

I used to use 000webhost.

List of Features.

http://www.000webhost.com/features

Personally I don't no what they get out of providing free web hosting, they own a paid hosting company which offers more space but 000webhost is far adequate.

I must admit there servers did have a little bit of down time but not a lot, it is a really good free host purely because you can buy a cheap domain from godaddy and then connect it to 000webhost for no fee.

You can install forums, blog and cms because it offers MySQL database and PHP support. And has a 350MB storage space which is plenty for me personally.

If the down time was not an issue, I would entirely agree with there slogan statement IMO.

Hosting is cheap now and is available from a variety of companys offer a good service if you have that extra cash its worth staying at home and missing out on the friday - fish and chips for a years hosting

Jewel · #14 (**permalink**) 09-16-2008, 04:45 AM

Thanks James and Rob.

Since I use SBI I don't have a host account for my own site, although since I think I am going to have to integrate a store onto my site for a certain product, I may end up with a hosting account.

I will look into some of the cheap hosts then and maybe just sign myself up and host it for them on my account.

Thanks.

websitebabblevisitor · #15 (**permalink**) 09-20-2008, 04:30 AM

oh free hosting can be great. i have done it a lot but i am now moving to a different place, paid hosting since it is so much better now !

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