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| Finding A Free Web Site Host |
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For Web Masters July 1999 • Vol.7 Issue 7 |
Finding A Free Web Site Host Choosing The Right Place For Your Web Site To Call Home | ||
Jump to first occurrence of: [FREE] [WEB] [SITE] [HOST]  Building a Web site is a little like preparing for a party. You can don a new outfit, do up your hair, and dab on some cologne, but the vital ingredient is still the party. Unless there's a host willing to open his doors to you and your fellow partygoers, all the glamour goes for naught. The same is true for a Web site. You can create a stunning set of pages, but without an Internet host—a place to store and display all those pages—you're all dressed up with nowhere to go. There are many Internet companies willing to host Web sites for free. Perhaps it's not so strange, since everyone likes a party. Indeed, free Web-hosting services exude an attitude of fun and community. Amazingly, many also offer other free services, such as E-mail addresses, bulletin boards, and chat rooms. Choosing a free Web host is similar to deciding which party you want to attend. Hosting services can be anarchic, restrictive, or geared to a specific crowd. You'll save yourself headaches if you know you and your Web site can get along with your host before you join a new Web site. Consider this your guide to free Web-hosting services. We'll explain how they work, point out the pitfalls you might encounter, and show you how to choose a free service that's right for you.  What's the Catch? When stuff is free on the Web, we usually start sniffing around looking for the catch. But with hosting services, the hidden hitch for the freebies is not always obvious. For some Web hosts, the motivation for starting a free service is the sheer fun of it. After all, it doesn't take much to create a hosting company. All you need is a reasonably powerful computer with a big hard drive, a robust Internet connection, and a couple of energetic Web programmers. For other hosts the goal is to support specific causes. During your search you'll find hosting services available to non-profit organizations and special interest groups, as well as for religious affiliations. The Advertising Angle. For most hosting services, however, the catch involves Web-based advertising. On hosting services you'll see lots of commercials. The sites direct the ads at you, the user, and at the people who come to visit your free Web site. Many hosts also require users to display banner ads or pop-up advertising windows on their free pages. Some require both. Ads also appear on the host site itself, so users see commercials whenever they come to edit their pages, check E-mail, or chat online. Higher-end hosts will also try to sell you more Web services, such as more hard drive space, once they have your business as a free user. Giving it away? One thing's for sure: if you want a free Web site, be prepared to provide lots of personal information. Some information you provide directly, such as your name and E-mail address. Other facts you provide indirectly, just by clicking around the host site. Almost any of the choices you make online can be used to create a marketing preferences profile on you. People who guard their privacy may decide a free hosting service is not worth this price. Many Web hosting services used to sell their members' personal information, but that's less likely to happen today. Most hosts promise not to sell your information without asking. Nevertheless, if you're uncomfortable with the idea of your personal data being sold, be sure to check the host's privacy statement. If you don't see a privacy statement, your personal information may well end up in the hands of Internet marketers. In any case, even if a service promises not to sell your information, there's nothing to stop the hosting service itself from sending you targeted E-mail ads. Signing Up. To get a free Web site, hosting services require you to become a member. As you might guess, this means entering your name and E-mail address into a Web form. In return you get a user name and password, which gives you access to a free Web site and lots of other services. The membership forms can be extensive, as long as five or six pages. You'll be asked to provide not only your name and address, but also such things as your annual income, education, and age group. The Xoom hosting service even wants to know what year your children were born! At various points in the membership form you'll be asked to sign up for more free stuff such as business newsletters and news updates. Be aware that the host can use these ploys to target you with E-mail offers and banner ads. Also, if you agree to accept additional freebies, you might be allowing the site to sell your personal information. Read all submission forms closely. The default responses on the forms usually give your consent. What's Your Niche? Most Web-hosting services encourage you to choose special interest topics or a theme for your new Web site. This makes it easier for the host to list your site by subject. It also makes it easier to target you for advertising. If you express interest in sports, for example, your Web site might appear in a list with other sports-lovers' home pages, and you can expect to see Web commercials for sports equipment.
Once you've completed the submission form, the host will send you a set of instructions via E-mail. Included in the instructions will be a member name and a password. To get your new Web page, you must return to the host site and log in with the member name and password. Creating Your Web Site. Once you've logged in as a member, you're ready to set up your site. If Web page creation is your main interest in joining a host community, here's where you'll want to compare services of different hosts. The more sophisticated hosting services have very good page-creation tools, often for various levels of expertise. Typically these authoring tools work via some kind of Web applet, a program that works with your Web browser. To use these authoring programs, you point and click to perform an action such as adding a graphic, and then a new browser window opens where you can pick from a list of images. This Web software is nice if you have a relatively powerful computer, but if you have a slow PC or slow Internet connection, waiting for multiple windows to open can be frustrating. Ease-of-use. When it comes to page creation, too many choices can be confusing. The GeoCities hosting service has many powerful tools for Web authoring, but an average Web user may have difficulty sorting them out. Experienced Web page builders will have an easier time of it at GeoCities.
Tripod's authoring interface is easier to understand but still allows for lots of freedom in page creation. Furthermore, each time we finished editing a page on Tripod, we got a screen telling us what the URL was and how much hard drive space we had left. We liked that. Fortunately, hosting services provide all manner of help pages, classes, and tutorials in Web page creation. Many even provide technical support via E-mail. Cool Web features. Host services differ in the Web features they provide. Free clip art is standard, but check to see if your prospective host offers free software for creating your own buttons and banners. Some services give you hit counters and guest book features. More advanced Web authors might be disappointed to find that many services limit the use of submission forms. Look for services that supply Web gizmos you might not have considered. Tripod, for example, lets you put your horoscope on your Web page, and it's updated every day. GeoCities lets you add headline news from various sources. Another helpful feature at Tripod prompts you to register your site at Lycos each time you create a new page. Registering with a search engine such as Lycos makes it easier for Web searchers to find your site, and (coincidentally) also makes it easier for them to find Tripod, too. FTP services. While it's pretty simple to create new Web pages using a Web host's tools, it can be a more complicated affair to upload information to a site you've already created. For this you must use something called File Transfer Protocol (or FTP) software. FTP is simply the process of telling the host's Web server where to find your Web files (on your hard drive, for instance). Although all hosts have an FTP feature, we found that Tripod makes this process even easier than most. Web hosts are also very competitive with each other, and many of them let users import Web sites they've created on other hosting services. Web space. Finally, you will also want to know how much hard drive space the host allots for Web sites. GeoCities and Tripod offer 11 megabytes (MB), which is enough space for a relatively substantial site. But Xoom offers unlimited hard drive space, which is a hard deal to beat. Look in the host's membership benefits area for this type of information.
Rules & Restrictions. Most hosts have strict rules about pornography and other distasteful material and expressly forbid its appearance on their free Web pages. If there is a question as to what exactly constitutes "distasteful material," the host reserves the right to decide the question. You might not think a photograph of a model in a bikini is in bad taste, but some hosts may disagree. If you post objectionable material on your site, you'll be asked to remove it. Or your host may simply delete the page. This kind of editorial control exercised by free hosting services angers some people, especially those who've had their pages removed. You can get some idea of these restrictions from the company's terms of service document. But if you are really concerned about being censored, we advise doing some careful browsing on the host site. If you want to create a site devoted to weasel mud wrestling, but you don't see any other weasel mud wrestling sites on the host, think twice before uploading your page. You can also do some Web searches on the service to see if there are groups protesting its editorial policies. If, after reading complaints about a service, you agree that the host's restrictions are unfair, we advise choosing a more easy-going hosting service for your site. Interpreting the rules. Certainly before you commit yourself to a hosting service, carefully read the company's terms of service. There you'll find privacy policies, limits on for-profit Web pages, editorial policies, liability statements, and other disclaimers. It's here that the company declares its right to remove pages that don't follow the rules. If it's a well-written statement, you'll see explicit rules, for instance, prohibiting copyright violations and the distribution of MP3 music files. Other common prohibitions include selling ads and sending mass E-mail to people with your host E-mail address (also called spamming). But you may also read an interdiction against "the values of the community," which could mean just about anything. Mainstream Services. Now that you've seen how Web hosts work, we'll introduce you to some of the more popular services. There are hundreds of free hosting services on the Internet, and many are excellent. Below are a few we think are worth checking out. Most people will be pleased with a free Web site on one of the mainstream hosting services. These popular sites offer high-end Web features that include tutorials, classes, clip art, multimedia files, and site-creation software. Home pages appear in areas devoted to special interests such as sports, health, entertainment, and family topics. The mainstream services all have very busy-looking entry Web pages, also called "front doors," with plenty of choices. Typically they have options for news and shopping and Internet searches. Of course, the front door is also where users come to log on, edit pages, visit member Web sites, find chat rooms, and check their E-mail. GeoCities This hosting service won't offend with its content. Its members are serious about creating informative Web pages. GeoCities also has volunteer Community Leaders in its special-interest communities who are responsible people you can ask questions of via E-mail about creating Web pages or about their particular professional expertise. GeoCities' Web page conventions may bother some people, however. All GeoCities pages have an indelible watermark in the lower-right corner. It may be a letter "g" or some other permutation of the "GeoCities" name. GeoCities pages also have a pop-up ad banner, which you can permanently disable if you add a special navigational banner to your page. Many GeoCities pages have an advertising frame at the top, and we discovered this frame appears on all pages linked to these GeoCities pages, which some might argue is a going a little too far. You can close the frame, but it will appear on the next GeoCities page you access. Basic membership benefits at GeoCities include 11MB hard drive space for Web pages, a GeoCities E-mail account, and Web chat forums. http://www.geocities.com Xoom This Web host has the most commercial-looking site of the top three mainstream services. Xoom crowds its entry-level pages with so many ads and miscellaneous offers there isn't much room for listing the home page communities contained within. Nevertheless, the home pages here at Xoom are as serious and informative as any. Similar to GeoCities, Xoom has Community Leaders for its interest groups. All the free pages at Xoom have a permanent frame at the top that contains links back to Xoom. The frame disappears on pages that are linked from Xoom. Basic membership benefits at Xoom include unlimited hard drive space for Web pages, a free Xoom E-mail account, and Web chat forums. http://www.xoom.com Tripod Some might argue that Tripod is a less mainstream Web host than our first two examples. For example, a regular column on the host site called "Tyler's Mad Crib" is a teenaged person's diary that discusses issues some parents might find objectionable. Nevertheless, the content on its home pages is certainly not frivolous. All free Web pages have a pop-up ad, which you can close but will reappear when you visit another Tripod page. To date, Tripod is one of the few free hosting services to offer a Web calendar service, which we think is a nice attraction. Basic membership benefits include 11MB hard drive space, a MailCity E-mail account, Web chat forums, and a Web calendar service. http://www.tripod.com Special-Interest Hosts. This group of services appeals to a narrower range of people. The Web-building features are less uniformly strong in special-interest hosts, but if you're choosy, one of these more-specialized services may be just right for you. MyFamily.com Unlike other Web hosting services, casual visitors to MyFamily.com can't go browsing home pages. That's because each site is password-protected so only you and your extended family can access it. Family sites get a "Who's Online" feature that lets you see if other family members are online. If they are, you can chat with them. Other amenities include a multimedia family album, genealogy software, a family calendar of events, an online encyclopedia, and a filtered Web searching service. In surfing around the host site, our browser got stuck several times in the frame-based interface, which was annoying. There is a fair sprinkling of ads here, but they're not overwhelming. If your family is active online, we think you'll like the MyFamily.com service. http://www.myfamily.com Truepath This hosting service promotes Christian values, and the home pages here avidly do so as well. Users create pages they can link to various areas of interest, such as entertainment, travel, or faith. Truepath provides Web-authoring tools for both the novice and the experienced Web user. The site itself is easy to navigate, if somewhat slow. Ads are present on the host site, but they are not overpowering. Home pages here include a Truepath banner ad, a pop-up ad, and sometimes both. Members of Truepath get 5MB of free Web space as well as chat and conferencing services. http://www.truepath.com gURLpages Sponsored by the award-winning online magazine gURL, this Web host is for teenaged girls. The site is a little slow, and at times the home pages appear broken. Nevertheless, gURLpages is a place where girls aged 14 and older can read and talk about issues such as parental divorce, sex, and peer pressure. Parents may want to visit gURLpages to take a look at the content their teenagers will be viewing. This hosting service has a shopping area, but otherwise has fewer ads than most others. Because gURLpages doesn't seek to exploit teens as consumers, we especially liked it. The place feels like an authentic online community. Users get 11MB for creating Web pages and a free E-mail address. http://www.gurlpages.com Pick A Winner, Or Pick Again. If you're looking for a free Web site, there are lots of choices. Don't feel as if you have to stay with the first host you try. Just like an off-line party, you can leave at any time. On the other hand, if you find the right mix of people, you can also return as often as you like.  by Marti LaChance
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