Best free webhost ??

[chris.p]

Nice one.

A few to try there...

I still haven't found one I like, to put my test site on, so I'll try out some of these. Whaddya reckon bk_ ?

[bk_7312]

Well, if you're referring to the ones keroffs listed, I haven't check them out yet. Fortunately for you, I've managed to round up a few more free webhosts:

http://www.doteasy.com/Services/WebHosting/Zero/
http://www.110mb.com/
http://www.mister.net/free-web-hosting/index.htm

But unfortunately for you, these free webhost doesn't provide as much storage space as the previously listed webhost with the highest at 250mb (mister.net) and highest bandwidth at 10gb (110mb.com). They seems to have lots of features and stuff (from their descriptions). Since I'm no expert, I can't really recommend any, you'll just have to try them one by one.

P.S - Call me Bk, without the underscore(_).

[chris.p]

Excellent.

I'm only looking for a simple hosting account that is absolutely plain simple and normal. Like this:

- I can use my own domain name, not a subdomain (obviously - not much use otherwise)
- It has one or more databases (can't run a full-feature site otherwise)
- Has htaccess file functionality (as above - can't do normal stuff otherwise)
- Has email (fairly obvious, you'd think - but not to the Zymic people)
- Has FTP (can't run a site without that unless it's just 4 HTML pages or something))
- A small webspace allowance is fine, maybe 100 or 200MB (what do you expect for free?)
- Low bandwidth is fine, maybe 10GB a month (as above. And if the site succeeds you can upgrade, the funds are there then).
- Preferably on a normal LAMP server and not one with the weird virtual path setup that needs a RewriteBase script in htaccess, that is too much aggro and makes running a CMS or blog much too hard (I thought those were rare, only used by people stuck in the 80s, till the very first free webhost I tried had it)

Then, you pay for an upgrade in order to get onto a server with less sites on it, and better bandwidth etc.

So I don't need or want anything unusual - no big space or bandwidth - just a standard server. It's true that you can get away with a lousy level of server maintenance and setup if you're talking about a flat site, ie HTML pages, but that means you can't run a blog, CMS, forum, wiki, shopping cart / ecommerce, mail-list, or whatever. But in that case they should advertise "It's perfect for homepages", so you get the message, as it's very restricted.

[bk_7312]

I had some free time so I decided to give 110MB a try. The registration was quick and simple but 110MB was not what it used to be. I remembered last year when I first encountered 110MB, I wasn't really interested in it back then but if you want to see it for yourself how 110MB looked like in the past, use the way-back machine.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://110mb.com

Back in the old days (last year or so), 110MB offered 5GB storage and 300GB bandwidth!!! Now, they downgrade the storage to 110MB, bandwidth to 10GB and disabled FTP and some other features for the free account, you can only use them IF you upgrade. See the link below for yourself.

http://www.110mb.com/forum/changed-p...-t42836.0.html

I've also took the time to check out Mister and Doteasy in more detail. Turns out you can't use a free sub-domain, you can either register your own domain (yourname.com) or transfer an existing domain to use their service (which is exactly what chris.p wants).

[chris.p]

Well, here's where I'm at so far, on my quest to see if there is actually a free webhost that provides a normal hosting service, but with maybe a low resource allocation. That's all I'm looking for and all you can ask for - if you need more resources than the minimum (in webspace, monthly traffic bandwidth) then I figure it's fair if you have to pay. But it would be nice to find a standard, normal webhost where you could start a site and see if it was viable.

Standard, normal webhosting = a normal server (LAMP server type), no virtual path to root (doesn't need cunning tricks in the htaccess file in order to run a normal blog or CMS with short URLs), a database or two, FTP, and email. Not too hard, you'd think.



__________________________________________________ _

Doteasy free webhosting

This one's OK for HTML sites, no databases so can't be used for a blog etc. Bandwidth is 1GB monthly, so it's very tight, but maybe OK for start-ups. I think 1GB would be about 100 visits per day or something like that.



110MB free webhost

No FTP so I didn't go any further with this one - it would be impossible to run anything other than a small HTML site.



Mister.net free hosting

No database, so it's a non-starter for a blog etc.


So there we go... No joy there so it's on to the next one, izFree hosting, from Keroff's list.

[bk_7312]

Right... Doteasy and Mister doesn't offer databases... didn't notice that. Anyways, good luck with izfree. One more thing, what was the first webhost you used, before switching to 000webhost?

[chris.p]

Um, well that's kind of a tricky question.

I've got a lot of sites out there, as I have my own, and also manage them commercially for others.

But I very much wanted to see if there was a viable free hosting option, for several reasons:

- I want to know if free webhosts have caught up with the 21st century yet, and offer databases, FTP, htaccess etc
- This site needs to cover everything that is 'free'-related, and web stuff is kind of my department at the moment
- I sometimes need cheap or preferably free hosts for sites that don't earn anything for one reason or another - for example to park domains on, while getting some history, as parking pages are actually no good for that
- Trying out new ideas such as a niche blog will cost you $60 a year on normal hosting, and if it doesn't work out, that's down the pan - but free hosting will let you do more, as there is no risk
- There are economy hosts @ $10 - $30 a year but their service isn't very good - if a free host offers the same service level, then I'd use that

So there are a bunch of reasons why I wanted to do this. One or two more in fact.

But the key element is probably "Do free hosts offer a genuine modern service (ie with databases etc) or is it just for HTML sites?". And that's what I want to find out. There is a big difference between the facilities that a host needs to offer for basic hand-coded sites or for database-driven ones.

[edit - to make this clearer]
Surely, anyone would consider that a WordPress blog is a normal site, today? Nothing special or fancy - yes? So all I'm trying to do is find a free host that is a viable option for a very simple site like this. Not much to ask, you'd think. And as I say, I wouldn't complain about low resource allocations (webspace, bandwidth) because if I need more then the site must be successful and I could pay.

But so far I just can't find a host that provides a simple, basic service.

[chris.p]

OK, I tried izFree. No good because they are closed, no new accounts being accepted.


x10: now this is different. It looks like this may be the first genuine web hosting service out of all the ones I've tried.

However the signup procedure is the biggest usability nightmare I've seen in a long while. Absolutely unbelievable. So I guess they try to keep the number of people down by making it very difficult to actually get an account

The next problem is that I've managed to find what their nameservers are (tricky, that), and now I have to find what the rest of the procedure is to host the domain there. Like all free webhosts they are mainly into providing free subdomains, as that's problem-free, requires no work to set up, and ends up by boosting their site (and not the site owner's property much).

Hmm. It's like banging your head against a wall, it'll be lovely when I can stop. Maybe paying $10 a year isn't so bad after all...

[chris.p]

Yo. Well it's turned into a thorough quest, sure.

All I wanted when I started was a standard webhost where you could put up a blog site or cms site, as per normal, but of course maybe with low webspace & bandwidth as you're not paying.

Sounds simple. But as yet I haven't found one. Lots of free hosts that will suit flat sites (straight HTML pages aka static sites), but nothing that looks good for any modern database site like Wordpress or Joomla.

Also you can easily get hosting if you want to go on a subdomain of theirs, like yoursitename.theirdomain.com, but that's not suitable for any kind of permanent site, just for temporary sites.

The last one I tried was x10, but although in theory they tell you their nameservers (to set up your domain with them), there's no way to get further with them, no answer in the forum etc. So that's a dud.

So far all I can find is good solutions if you have a small HTML page site that is temporary, maybe for a one-off event or something.

-sigh-

[chris.p]

Well, I went back to my install there as I couldn't get WP on a real domain working anywhere else.

I reinstalled it and it's OK now. Before, I had it in a directory, like how Fantastico installs it. But this isn't the best arrangement, ideally you FTP the files up to the webroot, you get a better install then.

But I still can't get the SEF URLs to work. This is something to do with the virtual path to root they have on the server at 000webhost. You have to use an htaccess file, with a Rewrite Base/ script in it. But it's not working for me.

I need to get that working or give up and move on. Or just live with it. It means the SEO is bad, so really it needs fixing. It's not just the URL type, it's stuff like duplicate URLs to pages, 301s for duplicates, etc. It could just be that the SEO plugin I've used won't work on this server.
.

[edit]
OK, an update. An expert on WP looked at it and fixed the htaccess, it needs a fancy one. Now we got SEF URLs and stuff, I'm a happy bunny.

So it's rock & roll at 000webhost