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 Website
Hosting: Discover the Benefits of Free Website Hosting
Services
While not intended for high traffic web sites,
free website hosting services are an appropriate
option for many smaller web sites. Individuals,
social clubs, non-profit organizations, and start-up
businesses may find that a free website hosting
service will sufficiently meet their needs.
In addition to their obvious price advantages, many free web site hosting services
often offer features that make it easy for beginners
to create a website. Templates and other add-ons
will allow you to create a site without knowing
HTML or investing in expensive web design software.
There are several factors to consider when selecting a free website hosting
service.
-
Amount of web space. Although most sites
use less than 5MB of space, your free website hosting
service should allow you some room to expand your
website.
- FTP access. Some free website hosting services
will only allow you to upload pages with their online
site builder. A good free website hosting service
will offer FTP access or the ability to upload pages
by e-mail.
- File type and size limitations. Free website
hosting services commonly place limits on the size
and type of files you can upload. This can be a
problem if you plan to use your site to distribute
large files or content that's not in the standard
HTML or GIF/JPG formats.
- Bandwidth allotment. Many free website
hosting services place limits on the amount of traffic
your web site can have. If you exceed the daily
or monthly limit, your site will be temporarily
shut down or you'll be charged a fee to keep it
running.
- Reliability and speed of access. Some free
website hosting services have a reputation for being
notoriously overcrowded, slow, and unreliable. Free
website hosting services normally don't offer technical
support to their customers, so it's important to
choose a site with an easy to operate system.
To help pay for the cost of operating a free website
hosting service, you'll be expected to place advertising
on your website. Some of the advertising forms most
commonly used by free website hosting services are
banners, text links, and pop-up ads. While some
people don't mind the advertising, many customers
of free website hosting services feel these ads
are a nuisance that takes away from the design of
their site.
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