Choosing A Free Web Host

The free web hosting market is currently a highly contested with many companies setting up in business to try and get new users. Also, with companies like Community Architect who allow anyone to start up their own free web hosting business, it is becomming harder and harder to decide which host to use. Although its not as bad if you choose a bad free web host than if you are paying a bad host, you will still waste a lot of time and risk annoying your visitors and its something which can be avoided with a bit of preparation.

The first thing to do when searching for a host is to decide exactly what you are going to need. There is no point in picking the first host you see and then finding that your site won't work properly on it. The most important thing you should look for is scripting options. If you need PHP, MySQL, CGI or ASP then find a host that offers them. Although many people will lead you to believe that only paid hosts offer these features they are totally wrong. Especially in recent months, many of the hosts have started offering a CGI-BIN as standard and there are many smaller hosts that offer other scripting options. Mainly, it is the big hosts like Tripod and Geocities, and small badly run hosts who don't offer scripting options like these.

Even if you don't think you will need any sort of scripting at the moment, consider what will happen when your site gets bigger. Are you going to need a message board? Will you need some sort of counter? If you have a lot of content will you be wanting to use some sort of database? It is better to choose a good host now than have to move to keep up with your requirements. Also take a look at hosts which offer their own pre-installed scripts (often a message board, form to e-mail, guestbook etc.). Its worth looking at these to see whether their scripts will do what you want without having to install your own scripts. It may save you a lot of trouble setting them up.

Advertising is one of the major factors you should consider in choosing a host. Advertising is added to your site by most free web hosts, usually in order to pay their bills (as running a host is very expensive). This can vary from the most common, a banner on the top of your site, to a text link, a floating advert, or even multiple adverts on one page. It is important to also consider whether the host allow you to place the advert yourself (using a special HTML tag) or whether they just automatically place it on your page, as some designs look awful with an automatic banner advert added to them. An interesting thing to note is that nowadays quite a few paid hosts offer free web hosting, and they place adverts on your site to annoy you, trying to get you to sign up for their paid services.

Another factor you should consider when choosing your host is the address or URL they will give your site. If you have your own domain name or a redirection service (like come.to) this probably isn't a major consideration for you (although finding a web host that fully supports domain names can give your site a much more professional look and can cut down on technical problems with redirection). If you don't have one of these short URLs you will need to think carefully about the URL offered to you. Obviously www.host.com/something/somethingelse/you/ will not be as memorable as you.host.com but there are other things to consider. For instance, make sure that you can pronounce your URL (i.e. don't get one with a ~ in it) and make sure that your host has a name that is easy to spell. Trying to explain the name www.thewakkystuupidname.com/~zc457309/ to someone would be almost impossible.

The final thing you should look at is how reliable the host appears to be. You don't want to visit your site one day and find that it has gone because the host has gone bankrupt. You also don't want to end up with a site that takes 20 minutes to load because its being hosted by someone with a modem. The best things too look for are well designed sites (although this isn't a brillaint way to tell, usually better off companies can afford a good web designer), a famous name (you are probably safe with Tripod, Geocities, Fortune City, Hypermart etc.) and a good business model (the best ones are the ones which offer paid upgrades or just offer free web hosting as part of their paid offerings).

There are many other things you need to look out for including Terms of Service (especially the 'you cannot have commerical advertising on your site' clause), support responses (look for hosts with good FAQs and other support pages on their site) but the best way to see how good a host is, is to get a recommendation. Maybe a friend will tell you one is good, maybe you'll read a review or a user comment on a web hosting review site, but any sort of testomonial you can back up is better than any of the factors above.

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