free web space for all - free webspace and email

Free Web space

Our Advise

Where to get it
The Internet can be compared to a new frontier in many ways, and one of is that there’s any amount of space out there going free to anyone who wants it. And unlike the real world, the amount of free space out there is increasing all the time.

All ISPs who charge a monthly fee offer free Web space, most of those who don’t charge also offer free Web space, and a surprising number of online businesses now offer free Web space. Indeed, many of the ISPs will offer you a sizeable amount of free Web space. For example, Direct Connection offers 20Mb and Global Internet 50Mb, but king of the hill is EasyNet - if you can think of a use for it, you can have as much free Web space as you like.

The other sources of free Web space are the many providers of free email services. They hand out both for free in an attempt to build bigger online communities, that’ll in turn generate more advertising revenue. Most of these services offer you between 2Mb and 10MB per user - though since you can be as many users as you like, there’s no real limit. Check out Angelfire at www.angelfire.com and the biggest of them all, Geocities at www.geocities.com.

Geocities is interesting as it themes its users’ Web sites. You set out your stall in an appropriate area full of like-minded folk. It seems to work. Angelfire hands out free email addresses along with its free Web space, and lets you to have a fairly sensible Web address.

The right address
If you register your own domain name and have it hosted, you could end up with a personalised Web address in the format www.yourname.com, which is pretty cool. It’s also drop dead simple for people to remember. But as you move into the free Web space world, the addresses get less obvious and less memorable.

For example, on Pipex you might get an address of the form http://ds.dial.pipex.com/yourname, which doesn’t even start with the usual www. This type of address is somewhat less personal. ISPs that give you a unique URL for your email address, such as Demon, offer more memorable user Web page addresses in the form www.yourname.demon.co.uk. This looks a lot better and is easier to remember.

If Web page creation is one of your primary reasons for being online, then the format of your address counts. Look for an ISP that includes your name as part of the main domain name. The only real advantage to UK users of free Web space from companies such as GeoCities which don’t provide Net access, is if you get your Net access via your company or university and don’t have an ISP account.

OK, so some people also use companies such as GeoCities because, despite what they claim, you can set up a Web site without divulging your true identity. If you’re heavily into cross-dressing, for example, and want to construct a Web site championing your hobby, you might not want to make it obvious who you really are.

Some ISPs provide cgi-bin services for users’ free Web space, but many don’t. Check it out before signing up

Free Web site services
Some Web pages are effectively little different from a printed page. They don’t do anything. They’re just there to be looked and read. If you’ve got this kind of site, it doesn’t really matter who’s hosting it.

On the other hand, if you want to use forms on your Web pages, you’ll need access to cgi-bin scripts. If you’re having your own domain name hosted, you can put up whatever scripts you like, but the situation is different with free space.

Many ISPs do provide a standard set of scripts for Web pages, which you can use, but the only way to find out is to check the ISP’s Web site or phone them up.

The other popular type of Web page support is for anyone using Microsoft FrontPage for their Web design. This provides a lot of active services you can embed in your Web pages, but to work the ISP has to be running FrontPage Extensions. Some do, and some don’t, and a few say they do when they don’t. Assume nothing. If you need specific services, make sure you ask about them first.

Other ISPs will handhold you through the whole site-making process. The Web page wizard at Pipex lets you to choose a template for various simple personal and business sites - all you have to do is fill in a series of simple forms, and your Web site magically appears.

Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow
Obviously, companies don’t make money by handing out free Web space. It’s a come-on for their other - paid-for - services. And as with everything free, you often only get what you pay for.

ISPs host lots of Web sites, both commercial and free, on one Web server. Sometimes it can be thousands. The ISP might tell you it has ultra-fast connections to the Internet, but that doesn’t mean people on the Internet will have ultra-fast access to your Web site.

Web servers are just computers, albeit fast ones (we hope). They handle requests for Web pages one at a time. It’s not unusual to find an ISP delivering pages from the users’ free Web space noticeably slower than it delivers pages from its commercially hosted Web sites.

This is because the commercial Web sites are sitting on a top of the range, screamingly fast Unix based Sun server, while the free Web pages are huddled forlornly on an NT based 166MHz Pentium PC the company receptionist used before being upgraded to a 300MHz machine.

Unfortunately, from the outside, you can’t easily get information about the physical setup at the ISP’s site. What you can do is try out existing users’ Web pages at various companies before committing. At the slightest hint of sloth, cross them off your list.

Setting it up
You might just want to establish a simple Web site as a contact point on the Net. You might have no interest in building a fancy themed site or even learning anything about creating Web pages. In which case, you should choose one of the ISPs or online communities which provide Web page wizards.

These - as in the Pipex example above - provide simple online templates where you type in the information you want to include on your page. They also usually supply a collection of artwork, icons, buttons and backgrounds you can use.

Which brings us to one, final point. Usually, you can run a Web browser at the same time as you’re editing your Web page. Every time you make a change, you can upload the new page, refresh the browser view and see the changes immediately.

Well, that’s the way it should be, but it isn’t always the case. There are ISPs where changes can take from minutes to days to become publicly available. For anyone running a topical or frequently updated site, delays are unacceptable, so always ask how long it takes new pages to appear on the Web.

Some places to get free web space from....

35 MB's Free Web Site Hosting
This new free host provider offers 35 megabytes of disk space to all Web surfers. Sign-up today and your URL will be http://www.yourname.bizland.com. We highly reccommend this one!!

Get a free Web site from Bigstep - No ad banners
Bigstep, premier hosting provider, was awarded as one of PC magazines Top 100 Web sites for the second year running. Create and manage a web site FREE and your Url would be Http://yourname.bigstep.com Or http://www.YourSite.com. You also get Unlimited access to our do-it-yourself Web-building service and can create an unlimited number of Web pages. Search engine and directory submission is also included, and best of all its all free!

VidaVision Free Homepages!
Get a Free 50 Megs of space for your homepage, it comes complete with guest books, webmaster tools and a web board system. Easy to use uploads, file manager, fast servers, and no traffic limits!

Keep your free hosting account!! iReg.com
offers cloaked forwarding technology that enables you to forward your domain name to your free hosting site, while users see only www.yourname.com .iReg.com : Domain Registration, Domain Hosting, Domain Forwarding & Unlimited E-mail @yourname.com

Freeservers.com
20 MB FREE Web space. Choose from over 13 sub-domains or host your own. Free email, instant messaging and more all built around your online community. Upgrade service available.

WebProvider.com
Offering 10 MB in free hosting with email and more. Can upgrade site for small monthly fee. Speedy network.

About.com Homepages
Join About.com and build a home page within your area of interest!

50 Megs
50 megs of free Web space... all the tools and a short sub-domain!

OrbitalTec.NET
Free online community dedicated to technologies of all kinds. We offer 20MB, unlimited e-mail accounts, and a variety of tools to build and maintain your site.

YOURNAME.BaPpY.cOm
Offering 20MB, a domain name you can be proud of, unlimited free email accounts, and a plethora of tools to build and manage your site. Let us prove to you that we're the best!

00server.com
Get your own subdomain on any of over 20 domains, such as 00me.com, 00sports.com, and fanspace.com. Also, get free e-mail, stats, guestbook, counter & more.

YOU.EShire.net
Build your hobbit hole in eshire.net for free, a great community for hobbits and non-hobbits alike. Gobs of space, and more amenities than you could shake a stick at, very respectable INDEED!

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