How to make a website using free web hosts

[Jeff]

look for a css file. then rename that to main_style.css and follow the instructions above.

[Neroez]

I recommend to make a website by yourself, and then host 'em on websites like 110MB or 50Webs (What You See Is What You Get Editors, WYSIWYG Editors, are your answer)

[Dom]

Neroez would help if you explained by "make a website by yourself" because that's what I'm doing. Using weebly.com to make my own website like Cheesy did.

[ratchetnclank]

Buy your own host and domain.


So much better

[Dom]

And so much more expensive for a 15 year old, attending a sports college with no job.

[Chris]

Don't use that excuse. I purchased my first domain at age 9 with the money saved in my piggy bank. Domains can be as cheap as 4$ a year and a decent sized server would be around 6-7$ a month, and that's a stretch. All you need to do is know where to find good hosting. In my honest opinion, my time spent on free hosting websites trying to figure out ways around the various ads and attachés that accompany them was a complete waste of time. If you're going to pursue an interest in web design I highly advise you take the right route. Nothing against free web hosts, but nothing worthwhile is free, especially in terms of web design. Do things right, and you will be glad you did. There is nothing worse than finding out you wasted time on a dying practice, and working with free web hosts at a time when web design is at an all time peak in regards to creative competition...dying practice would be an understatement.

Some of the main reasons why i dislike web hosters with "website builders" and offer free hosting are:

no control of your content
Not only do you rarely have the ability to modify the actual meat of your page, you have to bargain with the hoster by allowing them to post ads on your site. So they make money off of your traffic. You also have no control over your source. Anything you post can be changed, modified, deleted, etc at the full discretion of the hoster. Talk about security issues.

professionalism
Web design is the meat and potatoes of professionalism. By this I mean, if you don't appear to be professional, you won't get any work. And for those that aren't interested in getting work, why do you post your work on a website in the first place. The number one killer for most potential clients is seeing that extra subdomain attached to yours. It was a deal breaker every time for me. It's hard to convince your clients they need to purchase a server and domain for their business website when you haven't paid the same respects to yours.

quality
As I said before, nothing worthwhile is free. It takes a conscious effort on your part to make sure you make something that is worth taking the space. If you design sigs and take them seriously, you should make it worth your time to spend equal or greater amounts of time on developing the site that will give them a home. With free hosters you are at the mercy of their web builder. Some are okay, but most are attrocious, and after looking at the 164 errors weebly slammed into just one page of your site, I'm already convinced. Whats worse is some free website hosters offer additional services if you PAY for them. Give me a break.

dignity
Don't shame all of us by stooping to using free website builders. Show us you mean it and do it the right way!

If you need any help pursuing this, I will gladly be of assistance, as would many of the others who frequent the forums. All you have to do is ask. Hopefully I haven't offended you, but merely pointed you in the right direction, which was my full intention.

Here are a few hosters I've had good experiences with.

http://mediatemple.net/
http://1and1.com/
http://godaddy.com/

[Samuel]

I personally run my own server. It's free, fast and I can make hardware changes as I please.

You can use any computer to run the server. Only downside is, if you have a dynamic IP it's not possible to use a regular domain name. (www.google.com)

But I can install scripts, use any service I want and can use it as a media hub for my house.

It's not for the feint of heart. It requires quite a bit of knowledge and time to set up. Since it yours, there's no admin to contact, your it.


http://amphosted.com/ is an excellent host. Cheap, reliable. I've considered changing to a hosted site rather then a server, just for convenience.

[Neroez]

Neroez would help if you explained by "make a website by yourself" because that's what I'm doing. Using weebly.com to make my own website like Cheesy did.

You should search on Google to "WYSIWYG Editor".

http://www.google.com/search?q=wysiwyg+editor&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:nl:official&client=firefox-a

[Dom]

Thanks for all the advice, I will take it in to consideration and start saving up some money. My Dad has his own website so is going to make a page for me to play around with which I guess is a start.

[Chris]

You should search on Google to "WYSIWYG Editor".

http://www.google.com/search?q=wysiwyg+editor&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:nl:official&client=firefox-a

WYSISWYG editors are usually faulty as well. Not to intentionally rain on your parade or anything, :P. Those types of editors are nice and convenient, but the type of code they create is almost always going to cause more problems than they are worth, especially when cross-browser compatibility comes into play.

Dreamweaver is a good program for those that are fairly versed with html, mainly because it does alot for you, but is very easy to ruin good work with. DW has alot of nuances in the WYSIWYG editor that are attrocius in code, like how you create a new paragraph every time you hit enter while in live mode. Even if it's empty, it leaves empty p elements. BAD.