FREE WEB HOSTS
These are the FREE websites from experience, alphabetical order, so far:
https://www.angelfire.com/
raised to 5MB
http://www.crosswinds.net/
no limit, commercial ok, no censorship except "adult sites"
http://www.darkcastle.com/
no limit on pages/mb, commercial ok, no censorship
Note - VERY slow response when I went there.
www.delphi.com
Single Web Page with 4 Images
freeweb.digiweb.com
??MB
www.earthonline.net
6MB
http://www.freeyellow.com/
offers 5mb
Note - if you type in the URL you get www.escworld.com as an intercept, which offers freeyellow "for a limited time"
http://www.fortunecity.com/
10MB
http://www.geocities.com/
6 MB Free or
15 MB for $4.95 mo. with cgi and more or
add'l 3 MB if you are featured site (total 18)
www.internet-club.com
6MB
Based in Israel, and very slow access from the States.
http://home.onestop.net/
commercial ok
Note - temporarily down for server change
http://free.prohosting.com
10MB
commercial ok if you place banner
cgi, POP e-mail, ftp (slow account set-up)
Rampages - http://www.neocerf.com/front2.html
100mg...yes 100
along with cgi-bin, chat rooms, etc. (Thanks, Calvero)
http://www.trailerpark.com/
2mb
Note - AKA http://www.phrantic.com
https://www.tripod.com/
up to 11MB
http://www.xoom.com/
up to 11MB
THE FOLLOWING IS FOR BUSINESS SITES ONLY, but still free.
http://www.hypermart.net
10MB
-- Morgan & Anitra
Another host is Virtualave.Net offers 20 megabytes, in exchange for a banner. No popups (well, frames require the banner on EVERY page or else you get a popup), no watermark, short URL (yourname.virtualave.net)
Even virtual domains (yourname.com) if you pay the InterNic fee. They also allow CGI access.
One of the best guides to free webspace is at
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~maxlee/FWPReview
In my own experience, the servers that offer more than 11MB are also slow and erratic -- meaning, they go down a lot. And they have become stiffer about being used as repositories for large non-HTML files that you are going to call from some other server.
If you are going to create a webpage on that server that will display/play the files stored on that server, they will acept .mov and .avi files -- but not if you are going to store the .mov and .avi files there and display them on a webpage on someone else's server.
I have a number of websites on different servers because I have a lot of different interests, and it is easier to get them indexed in search engines and webrings if they are on separate sites.
But there is overlap and cross-referencing, too -- and I have never had a server object to my referencing pages on other servers.
One solution to your problem may be to categorize your files in 10MB groups and put each group on a different server.
A secondary advantage to that would be to make it more unlikely that your entire site would be down at once!
-- Anitra Freeman
Here are some free web servers.
http://members.spree.com/
https://www.angelfire.com/
http://www.freeyellow.com/
spree has unlimited space.
-- Ally Maddox
Another Free Web Host is Spaceports, and it is really fast. It's located at
http://www.spaceports.com/
where you get your first MB of space and email them and ask for more space(as much as you need or
want), and it's totally free, but you must have a FTP program to upload you files.
-- Dwayne Washington
I tried splitting files and servers, but it got to be unwieldy. That lead me to finally getting an account at Simplenet. They have unlimited space at $10 a month.
http://www.simplenet.com
-- Virginia Blalock
WebJump.com gives you 25 meg free plus cgi access. You can also sign up for more than one site.
The name is listed as http://yourname.WebJump.com I use it is a mirror site to my own domains where i rent space and it's a good place to test diferent things before I go and place with it on my regular server.
They have advertisement at the top of your page. No POPUPS! :)
I get a much higher successful hit rate from Webjump than I do the other free web space servers.
-- Brian Beirne
FREE WEB HOST RATING SERVICES
Is there a rating service for Free web sites?
There is a site, The Free Webpage Provider Review,
http://www.digiweb.com/~maxlee/FWPReview/index.shtml
AKA http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~maxlee/FWPReview
that not only gives a lot of info on free webpages, but has a forum where individuals list user reviews and updates on what's currently happening with the various servers.
Another evaluation of free webpages that has some holes but also covers some areas that others miss.
http://starbase.neosoft.com/~peter/freepages.html
A good guide to low-cost-but-not-free providers is
http://www.callihan.com/budget/
-- Anitra Freeman
The most comprehensive list of web space providers I have ever seen is located at
http://www.digiweb.com/~maxlee/FWPReview/
Lists over 100 web space providers and their offerings.
-- Vince Matal
WEB SITE SIZE
I went over my allotted website size (5MB), and had some problems with my host as a result. Is there a way of checking how much space you may be using at your web site?
A way to check the amount of file space usage on your host -
**If you have Win95*
**If you have your files in a directory on your hard disk or floppy disk.*
Click on Start
Click on Programs
Click on Windows Explorer
Click on the directory/subdirectory your files are in
All your files will show up in the right hand window. At the very bottom of that window on the lower right bar, it will tell you how many KB or MB you have in that directory (and the amount of Free Space). This tells you whether you are close to the limit on your host.
Note: If you have html/htm files in one subdirectory and jpg/gif files in an images directory, you will have to look at both directories and add the usage up from each to get a total.
-- Morgan
Another way to do that (although you still have to have to have all your files held locally) is to go to the parent folder of where you store your web site (so, for example, if you store your website in c:\website, you'd go to c:\) and right-click on the folder where the site is stored, and then select properties. Then, you'll get the whole space taken up by the files (including any subdirectories).
This also works if you have them stored in the root folder of your floppy drive (eg, a:\) - just go to My Computer and right-click on your floppy drive and select properties.
Remember, however, that certain files on UNIX systems (such as plain text files (_including_HTML and Perl scripts)) sometimes take up slightly different amounts of space because of the different characters used (the newline character in DOS/Windows is different to that of UNIX systems).
-- James East.
For any of us who are on Macintosh, this is how you can check folder/website size on that operating system: (Windows users can delete now, this won't make a speck o' sense, except maybe the last two paragraphs):
1) In Control Panels, click on Views
2) Click "on" (x in the box) the option "Calculate folder sizes"
3) For later reference, it's also helpful to click "on" the option "Show disk info in header"
4) Now, when you open the top-level folder, that contains your folder, choose the "View" option name/size/kind/label/ or /date -- anything but "Icon" or "Small Icon" -- and you will see the folder size in the column "Size".
Alternative: highlight the folder (don't open it) and choose the option "File/Get Info" (probably COMMAND+I for keyboard shortcut: COMMAND+SHIFT+I in some versions)
I have a separate folder for each website, with subdirectories on the website being subfolders within the folder, and the website folder size is a pretty good indicator of the posted website size.
As James East pointed out, file sizes vary slightly according to the way different operating systems store them.
It is very handy to have all files on the hard disk, in folders, because then I can test all updates locally before uploading them.
This doesn't mean I *do*, mind you, it just means I *can*. :)
-- Anitra Freeman
GETTING YOUR OWN "DOMAIN NAME"
I'm fed up with the FREE web sites hosts. How do I get my own private domain and how much does it cost
You have to first find out if the name is available. Names are reserved and registered with Internic.
http://rs.internic.net
They have a simple search function which allows you to enter the name you want and see if it is already taken. If not, reserve the name yourself. The cost for actual registration is $35.00 per year, with the first two years paid in advance - $70.00.
If you choose a name such as "chow-dog.com", and it's taken, try "chowdog.com" or "k9chows.com" or some other variation.
Next, you have to find a web host who will "rent" you space for your web site. You can use a search engine to find them, call on friends who already have a host and contact theirs, or go to one of several sites with hosts listed, such as
http://www.webhostlist.com/
Expect to pay $10.00-20.00 a month for the host's services, and sometimes a small "setup" charge.
There are also "vanity" hosts for about 5.00 per month. You would be listed as www.yourname.theirname.com/
Costs are usually dependent on MB of web space needed and services offered. These vary widely from host to host.
When you find a web host, then you (or they) can go back to Internic and register your chosen domain name.
Remember, there are great "hosts" and not-so-great hosts, just like anything else.
Then the real work begins: designing your site and maintaining it.
-- Morgan Smith
