Mar 17 2010
Easy Tips on Getting Your Free Website Today
These days, getting a free website is easy. Whether you want to start a small online business or just want to share your opinions with the rest of the world, you can get a website of your own with just a few clicks of the mouse. Before getting that site, however, you first need to answer the question, what do you want to do with your website?
If you just plan to share stuff with others online, you should probably go with a blog. 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.
If you would like to establish a reputation for expertise on a particular subject so you can build a career as a freelance consultant, a blog is the ideal solution. 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 get free articles from content generating sources other than yourself.
You can also create a blog that is accessible only to family and friends by using an online diary service or tumblelog. These blogs are essentially online journals or scrapbooks where you can post photos, videos, text entries and links to other sites. They can also be used to social network through an online community.
If you’re creating a site for an online business, however, you will need to use a free web hosting service to create your site. A web site set up on a free web host allows you to include e-commerce features such as multiple e-mail accounts, a shopping cart 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 look something like this mybusinessname.webhost.com, which many clients might interpret as 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 you’re okay with these restrictions, then a free web host solution is for you. Once your online venture starts to become a success, you can easily upgrade to a paid web host provider.
Before selecting the web host to get your free web site, here are some criteria you should consider.
First, how much web space are you allocated by the host? Consider what your needs are and whether you intend to embed a lot of pictures, sound files and video clips. You also need to consider that you’ll want to have room to expand your site for future needs.
Second, once you’ve gained some technical expertise and want to upload web pages that you’ve designed yourself to your site, does the web host allow FTP access?
Third, what are the limitations of the host with regard to maximum file size and types of files that you can upload?
Fourth, how fast or reliable is the web host? 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? For a starter e-commerce site, an allocation of 1 to 3 GB should be sufficient.
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.
