Free website hosting

The most important consideration for any webmaster considering free website hosting is that visitors must be able to get to their pages, always. You know yourself that when browsing, if you follow a link and get an error message instead of the expected page you are unlikely to return

Many free website hosting services have very poor uptime records - this is bad for your visitors, and bad for your prospects in the search engines. If the spiders think your pages have gone when they visit, you could drop out of their indexes.

Before you put a lot into a site on a free host, do some testing yourself, or sign up with a free service that checks a site is reachable.

You should also be aware that free website hosting services often disappear entirely. You could lessen the risk here by signing up with longstanding free web hosts which have stood the test of time. There is a selection of these listed on the Open Directory's page at www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Hosting/Free/
both for personal and commercial oriented services. The listing summarize the restrictions and fearures each of the free website hosting services imposes for users.

Another issue you have to think about before you sign up with a free web host is the limits which may be imposed on your file types.

It is fairly common for free website hosting services to restrict uploads to html, jpg and gif files only. While you may find this acceptable, if you want to feature video, want to distribute or share files, or need cgi or other types of applications, such a host would be a bad choice.

In addition, many free hosts do not allow you to add your own advertising links. While you may not need this for the hobby site you are planning, you shouldn't dismiss the opportunity to make some money by accepting such limitations - some free hosts do allow your own affiliate links. Check before you sign up.

Next page - selecting your free web host.