Making a Free Website
Making a free Website is possible! In fact many of the tutorials and articles on this site use free resources, available on the web, like the Trellian WebPage editor.There are many components involved in making a website free or otherwise, and here we will look at these components in turn, and particularly at the problems that may arise when using free website making components and tools.
You should only consider the free approach for personal sites. I do not recommend the free approach for business websites.
Components Required
There are 3 main ingredients or components required:- Free Website Domain Name
- Free Website hosting
- Free Website building tools
Website Domain Name
Every website requires a domain name. If you want a free domain name then you are limited to a domain name provided by your ISP (Internet service Provider) or your hosting provider.In either case your domain name will have a form similar to thiswww.isp.com/yourname, or www.yourname.isp.com. Because of this free domain names are unsuitable for a business and should only be used for personal websites.
Domain names aren't expensive and if you want an almost free website then consider purchasing your own domain name. Low cost domain names are available from many sources but remember that it is usually better to choose the same hosting provider for both web hosting and the domain name.
If you are thinking of making several websites then remember that it is possible to use a single host/ hosting package to host multiple domain names which will drastically reduce your hosting costs.
In effect you pay for the first site and additional sites are free.
Website Hosting
There a many free web hosting providers available on the Internet. The two main sources of free Website hosting are ISP web space and free hosting providers like:For Sites that are content only (99.9% of all websites) then a website blog is probably the best choice for good quality free site without advertising.
Beware Free Hosts!
Some free hosting providers require that you transfer your domain name (if you have one ) to them. You should be very wary of this as it could potentially prove expensive. Always check the conditions before signing up.
Business websites should never use a free host!
The Blogging Option
Although I'm not a great fan of most free site providers as most tend to be short lived. There are two big free blog providers blogger.com and Wordpress.com.They are an ideal solution for personal websites and for anyone looking to gain a little experience building websites. You can find more detail in the blogging section.
