Sunday, December 07, 2003

Free Webhosts

Since I've been out of space on my webhost, I've done some looking around for free webhosts to tide me over until I can afford more space.  So, I plugged the keywords, webhost free ftp, into Google and came up with some helpful links. Free Webhosts.com, also known as Free Webspace, offers a list of sites categorized by features or their rating.  One section lists the most recent additions.  This is helpful if you've been to the site before and don't want to search through all the same sites that you have already seen. One of Free Webspace's top picks is Netfirms.  I tried this site last year.  An unobtrusive banner was placed at the top of each page, and FTP was free.  However, now my site is gone, and apparently, Netfirms only offers a 30-day free trial.  After that period, you can sign up for plans starting at $4.95 per month. A promising host, Sonnex Hosting, offers free hosting with no ads.  What's the catch?  You can sign up only after posting 50 messages to their forum.  According to Free Webspace, hosting includes FTP, CGI, PHP, FrontPage Extensions, Java, and Perl. Google pointed me to Free Webspace.net.  I found the index page confusing, but eventually I came across a table that listed the features of webhosts by using the power search. From this list I visited, Beige Tower.  I read the FAQ, tutorials, and articles.  Then I joined the forum and read some posts.  After much study, I decided to apply for an account.  Apparently there is a few week lag in approving accounts, if you are approved at all.  I did a Google search for Beige Tower webpages so that I could see the caliber of sites that they host.  I found a few during the search, but the best provider of URLs was the forum.