Mar 11 2010
Easy Suggesstions on Setting Up Your Free Website Now
These days, getting a free website is easy. With just a few mouse clicks, you can create a site for your small online business or one that allows you to communicate your opinions to the world at large. Before getting that site, however, you first need to answer the question, what do you want to do with your website?
If you would just like to share information with visitors, then a blog is the ideal solution for you. A blog allows you to post articles, pictures, videos as well as links to other web sites, and it requires little technical knowledge. Visitors are also allowed to write and upload comments about what you’ve posted, and you can manage them, editing certain comments and deleting others you find inappropriate.
A blog is the way to go if you would like to build a reputation as an expert on a particular subject in order to launch a career as a freelance consultant. A hosted blog service allows you to set up a blog in a matter of minutes. You can use the site’s pre-designed templates to create an attractive blog design and write and upload blog entries using its text editors. An alternative is to use free content articles from content generating sources other than yourself.
If you would like to restrict access to your blog to family and friends, you can create your blog using an online diary service or a tumblelog. Tumblelogs are essentially online scrapbooks or journals where you can upload pictures, video clips, text entries as well as links to other sites. You can also use your online diary to social network in online communities.
On the other hand, if you’re setting up a website to do business, you will want to go with a free hosting service to set up your site. A free web host allows you to put e-commerce features on the site such as a shopping cart, multiple e-mail accounts and online payment solutions.
However, there are many downsides to using a free web host. For one, many hosts will put their own advertising on your site as a way of defraying their hosting costs. Your URL will not be a unique domain name, but will include the name of the hosting service, which might make the site seem unprofessional. And the amount of bandwidth you are allocated is limited, which means that if you start to get a lot of visitors, many of them may not be able to access your site once you have exceeded your allocation. If these limitations don’t bother you, go ahead and set up your site on a free web host. You can always upgrade to a paid web host once your business starts to take off.
If you’re interested in using a free web host to set up your site, here are some things to look out for when picking the host to use.
First, how much web space are you allocated by the host? If you intend to put a lot of pictures, video clips and sound files, the allocation may not be enough for your needs. You also need to consider that you’ll want to have room to expand your site for future needs.
Two, does the web host allow FTP access, so you can upload pages you’ve designed yourself once you’ve learned how?
Third, what are the limitations of the host with regard to maximum file size and types of files that you can upload?
Four, is the web host reliable and fast? If your site frequently down or has slow access, then you will lose visitors and business since they will look for another site.
Fifth, how much bandwidth does the free web host allocate to you? One to three GB of bandwidth allocation should be enough if you’re just starting your e-commerce site.
There’s little difficulty in getting a free website; the challenge lies in creating and maintaining an interesting one that will make people want to visit it over and over again.
