A free website host - how can I find a good one?

If you are looking for a service which will host a free website, you should not have much trouble. Such sites are still advertised everwhere, despite the popularity of more direct ways of getting your material online like web-based blogs and social bookmarking sites.

If a free website host is your preference, the issue is not likely to be finding one, but working out which of them are actually worth signing up with.

What service you are likely to find most acceptable will of course depend on what you want to do with it. If you only have a few text-based pages to put up, almost any well-established free website host will do.

If, on the other hand, you want to host many images, video, music files, or advertising or affiliate material, then you will have to make sure there are no restrictions on these which are enforced as conditions of use by the free website host.

If you are looking to eventually build up your visitor numbers and traffic, you may need to consider what bandwidth restrictions a free host will impose.

If you are going to turn your site into a commercial concern, with some free hosts your message will be blunted by the presence of the host's own advertising, which is how they can offer free hosting to you in the first place.

One practice which is now being frowned on and disallowed by free hosts is the creation of 'doorway' pages, which link to or redirect to another web site which exists to sell something. This has been recommended as a cheap way of building inbound links to your main site, but it may no longer be worth the trouble.

If you want to start any kind of web business, look at other hosting options - .