subject: Is Free Website Hosting All It's Cracked Up To Be? [print this page] When you are new to the world of building a website, or simply those of you who are on a tight budget, free web hosting normally appears appetizing. As you're probably aware however, hardly anything in this world is truly free. Often those offering something for free are seeking something else as payment, even if it's not your money. Considering this, is free hosting really all it's cracked up to be?
Web hosting (like most other services) costs money to provide. Although the services offered by free web hosts are often very basic in comparison those which which you might buy, that business would still soon be out of pocket if they couldn't recuperate their costs via some means. This is exactly the reason most free web hosts display some kind of advertisements on any websites you have with them.
Although these advertisements can often (though not always) be "closed" or hidden away after they've been displayed, they always look somewhat unsightly and as such can significantly degrade your visitors browsing experience, and even the credibility of the individual running the website - yourself!
For that reason, anyone who is making a website for more than sheer enjoyment - particularly those seeking to run a business via their website - should dismiss any free web hosts who force you to display advertisements on their behalf. In actual fact, it's probably a better idea to dismiss all free web hosts completely, in such instances. What you'd be saving by not paying for hosting would not be worth the amount of business or visitors you'd lose as a result.
The second major disadvantage of most free web hosting services is that they're simply not rigged up to support up-to-date technologies that most modern websites now utilize and require. Most websites are no longer merely static HTML pages built in point and click web design software - even those made by amateurs. Many are blog-based, or incorporate community forums or the ability for visitors to leave feedback to be displayed on that website, amongst other things.
All these things command that your web hosting service be capable of processing different scripting languages (such as PHP) in addition to having back-end database support, such as MySQL. This is all functionality that a great many of free web hosts simply cannot or will not offer to non-paying customers.
Customers of free web hosts are often not required to provide their full details. Couple that with the fact that no payment is required and it's obvious that the web host has no way to check the validity of that customers information.
As such they have no reassurance whatsoever that their customer doesn't have unsavoury intentions - such as the intention to spam or host illegal or forbidden material. This is precisely the reason most free web hosts deny customers the ability (or lack the support) to host any files beyond static HTML pages and a limited number of images.
Overall, there is little alternative but for anyone who is seeking to run a serious, functional website to shell out for some paid web hosting. Nowadays it's so cheap as to be little to no burden on ones wallet.
by: li baocai
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