Free Web Page Hosts with No Banner
Ads?
Looking for free web site hosting with
no annoying pop-ups, pop-unders, buttons, banners, headers or footers?
And as well as this, you'd like 99.8 percent up-time, fast servers,
access to the cgi-bin for scripts, FP extensions, PHP and MySQL
databases and FTP access?
We went out searching for the best "no ads" totally free
site hosting space deals around. The results: disappointing, they are
very few and far between. Many have come and gone, or as in the case
of Bizland, quite suddenly withdrawn their free service and demanded
that all their customers begin paying. We took a look at the
promotional information for over 300 free web hosting companies, but
then also looked at customer reviews. There was usually a major
difference in opinions.
There is still a plethora of free web hosts around, but most require
that you carry their advertising or offer you a limited time for the
free service, usually a year. On the up side of this, many of these
companies do supply quality hosting with many services in exchange for
having their banners served up on your pages. We did find that many of
the non-banner supported free options were hosted on very slow
servers. In a number of cases, the server failed to respond at all!
How do non-banner free hosting
companies make their money?
These companies try to survive by
enticing the freebie customers to take out their paid hosting space
options, which is fair enough. Quite often, their paid hosting options
are quite cheap. You'll find that if you utilise this kind of free
site hosting, the services available are rather limited and you'll
need to pay for things like Front Page extensions and access to the
cgi-bin for scripts. The other way that they survive is through
regular newsletters containing offers from companies that pay them for
the ad space.
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Strategies in using non-banner
supported free hosting options
One of the common patterns for these
companies is that when they first set up shop, customer support is
fantastic, server response times are great, shared scripts function
well and file transfer interfaces are reliable. But as time goes on,
"gold fever" hits, and people begin flocking to these
companies with inevitable results - things start slowing down and
falling over.
If you do find yourself in the position of needing to use free space
due to financial restrictions; here's a couple of things you can do:
Buy a domain name first
Register a domain name first - Many
domain name registrars give you a stack of free services with each
name registered. Costs for domain name registrations can be as little
as US$10-$12 per year. One of the services that you want to look for
is a domain name control panel and free http/URL forwarding or
framing. This allows you to redirect the name as you wish, changing
it's destination every day if you want to! If your free web hosting
provider goes belly up or isn't functioning correctly, you can move
your site to another provider and redirect the domain name to point
towards it.
A word of warning - be very careful who you register your domain name
with. We recently assisted a client who registered a domain name for a
couple of dollars, but had very little control over the name without
having paying huge fees to the registrar. It took approximately 2
months to wrest control away from the rabid registrar and transfer the
name to a more ethical company. Always read the fine print.
What if I can't afford a domain name?
You could always use a free, no-banner,
no-popup URL/HTTP redirection service from providers such as:
http://www.shorturl.com/
http://www.has.it/home.php
http://www.ipfox.com/home.html
The only issue with using these free URL redirection
providers is the question of continuity of service. Also bear in mind
that when it comes to being listed on the search engines, nothing
beats having your own domain commercially hosted, rather than a
redirection to one.
Free web space may be right under your
nose!
When you sign up for Internet access,
it is not uncommon for you also to get some free web space thrown in
with the deal. We receive 10 megs of space, including Front Page
extensions from our Internet Service Provider which has been
invaluable for creating a mirror / backup version of Taming the
Beast.net. Email your ISP to check out what is available to you.
Ok, back to non advertising supported, free web hosting options. While
we won't personally recommend any as we haven't used them and there
were too many conflicting views, the following free hosting
directories may assist you in finding some no frills, no banner web
space. Remember to read the fine print before signing up for any
service:
Recommended free web space directory:
http://www.free-webhosts.com/
This is a searchable database directory of over 1,200 free webspace
hosts with reviews and ratings, updated daily. It is by far the
largest and best directory of free webspace.
The advanced search is at:
http://www.free-webhosts.com/power-search.php
For listing all free hosts with no ads (currently about 60), go to:
http://www.free-webhosts.com/no-forced-ads.php
Looking for free file storage space?
http://www.freewebspace.net/guide
/diskstorage.shtml
If you know of a good free web host that doesn't
require their banners to be shown, we'd love to hear from you!
Written by Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources
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