Free Web Hosting Tips
1. The reliability of the service and their offers.
A brand new hosting provider which boasts features that
are too good to be true usually won't last for too long.
Let's take the example of one host (I won't give names here)
that went offline only a few weeks ago. They were offering
500MB of storage, 10GB of bandwidth per month, domain hosting,
unlimited domain parking, CPanel with just about all possible
features, absolutely no ads (not even a request to link
back), and this only for 150 posts in their forum. Sounds
too good to be true? Betcha! After they cashed in two fat
checks from AdSense they simply went offline. No prior notice,
no apology, nothing.
Things to watch out for:
- Design. If the site looks like it was bought from a man
in a white van, or if it's using a design from a free template
site, it's probably just a waste of time. If these guys
couldn't pay a web designer $100 for a decent layout, they
don't probably have the skills to run such a site.
- How long they've been around. I'm not saying that new
sprung hosting services can't make it, just be careful when
choosing one that's two months old.
- Check their Google PR, ranking on free hosting directories
and any other location you might think of. If the site has
tons of inbound links, the owners have probably spent a
considerable amount of money advertising it, so they plan
to do their best to keep the service up.
2. Ads
Advertising placed on your web space is how free web hosting
providers support their service. Having someone else's ads
displayed on your page is usually the price you have to
pay for their free service. There are a select few hosts
that won't plug in banners or other forms of advertising
in exchange for your performing other services in their
favour (like posting in their forum or referring other members).
What you should look for:
- How well the ads blend into your design. A red frame
at the top will probably not go well with your blue template.
If possible, pick a host that allows you to place a banner
code anywhere you want-- this way you can put it wherever
it best fits.
- Whether or not they display targeted ads. If your site
is on dog chewing toys and the ads are on car deals your
visitors will probably not like it. Worse, watch out for
sites that display pornographic ads.
- What kind of ads they're displaying. Never, under any
circumstances, sign up for a site that advertises through
popups. Popups are extremely annoying, and most visitors
will not return to your site.
- Do they allow your own ads to be displayed? It's one
BIG issue you should know before signing up if you plan
to make money with your site.
3. Tools and scripts available
Forums, guest books, counters, polls are always nice features
to add to your site. If you can't or don't want to handle
installing such an addon from a third party you could look
for a host that already provides it. Keep in mind that these
tools are not always the best and that there are most likely
many other free ones out there. On the other hand, if your
chosen host provides very few or no such tools, then it's
probably either running on a slow server and doesn't want
to clog it up or doesn't give a dime about their customers.
4. Monthly bandwidth and what they do after you eat it
up
Always, no matter how small your site is, look for a host
that offers at least 1GB of traffic per month. Also consider
going with a host that will offer you a paid subscription
if you go over this quota instead of simply blocking access
to your page. Say you hit the jackpot and visitors start
flowing in like crazy from day one. Next day you don't want
them to see a page like "Sorry, this site has gone
over the allotted bandwidth, please check back in a month
or so".
Try this simple calculation: say your pages average 50kB,
including images, or (approx.) 0.05MB. Now let's say your
visitors browse 3 pages on average, before they leave the
site. That's 3 x 0.05 = 0.15 MB. If we divide 1GB (or 1,000
MB) by 0.15, we get 6,666 -- the average number of visitors
you can get in one month without going over the bandwidth
quota. Divide that by 30 and you can have 222 visitors per
day. Also keep in mind that search engines also eat up bandwidth,
a deep crawl from a spider can eat up as much as 100MB if
you have a lot of pages.
5. What your URL will look like
Even though you can get a short URL for free from services
like http://go.to or a subdomain (.co.nr / .biz.ly etc),
it's always best if your host can offer you a URL that's
easy to remember. Choose a host that offers a subdomain
if available (http://youraccount.theirdomain.com as opposed
to http://www.theirdomain.com/youraccount).
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