Webpage Hosting

Where? do I put my page on the Web?

Once you get in to this more, you will be amazed at the many places you can have your own Website - for free, usually with ads on your pages, or for a small fee with no ads except what you choose to put on there yourself. Here are a few suggestions.

1. Your ISP
   Most Internet Service Providers (that's what you use to connect to the Internet) provide their customers with "space" for Web pages. Usually, they do not put ads on your pages, like the Free Servers who are not ISPs. Look around on the Home Page of your ISP for a link to information on this. It could be called Home page, Web page, Personal page, or by another name. If necessary send an email asking them if they provide this and how to access.

2. NBCi My Website
   NBCi no longer has free web space for personal pages available, or ANY web space available for that matter!

3. 50megs.com -- 50 MB of FREE Web space
   50megs.com is a good place. You have plenty of space and pages load pretty quickly, most of the time. (I received an email in August 2001 stating that they would be charging for hosting from now on :o(   - BUT this is ONLY if you want more than 50 MB of space and other perks.)

   The above link takes you to the Signup page. There was a screenshot here showing what you would see after sign-up, but with all the changes they are making, I am no longer sure it is correct.

   I was one of 50megs first members and before my other domain (www.ewebtribe.com) was established, I had quite a few pages in 50megs. When I tried to access my site there yesterday (December 2000), I found that it had been deleted due to inactivity. Can't blame them! Had not done anything there for months. So I went through the signup process again. There have been a lot of changes - all for the better! Very happy to see them prospering.
   Not wanting to take time to try their Page Builder, I clicked on the "Upload a Web Site" button on the above page. They walked me through the FTP process with easily understood information, in a 1, 2, 3 process. I believe anyone could follow these instructions. (Of course I already knew how, but wanted to check their tutorial.) If their other tutorials are as good you will not have a problem learning to use 50megs tools, File Manager, etc. The page and graphics I uploaded are at http://strspdrdncng.50megs.com/

   They do put an ad bar/banner at the top of every page, in return for providing the free Web site.
   

4. AOL Hometown
   You do not have to be an AOL member, or use AOL to connect to the Internet to have pages in AOL Hometown! On this AOL page scroll down till you see

   Click on Try Easy Designer. This will take you to the "signin/signup for Web site" page where you will see the following instruction:
   "Use a screen name and password from any of these AOL products:
   * America Online   * AOL Instant Messenger   * Personal Finance Web Center   * AOL Hometown   * My News"

   Please use Easy Designer or Advanced, NOT 1-2-3 Publish. If you use 1-2-3 Publish, you cannot use any HTML. Also you cannot edit a page made with 1-2-3 with anything except 1-2-3!

   With Easy Designer you can use some HTML that you have learned. Click on that Option in Easy Designer. You can paste a whole coded page in that editor (simple or more). Just copy the HTML for a page from where you made it or saved it, and paste into the editor. You could also upload an index.html (or other *.html) file with FTP after you get started. Click on Advanced Tools on the left (see above) to find instructions on FTP for AOL Hometown.

   They do put the Hometown AOL FRAME at the top as shown above, and it follows a visitor to every page they go to from a link on your page, even when NOT an AOL Hometown page, unless you use target="_blank" or target="_top" in the link tag like this

   <a href="http://www.starspiderdancing.net" target="_top">starspiderdancing.net</a> Here is a link to the page I made with Easy Designer, using my AIM name: SSDancing's Home Page   If you "View Source" you will see all the "Garbage" I talked about on the Home page of HTML Help that these type of pagemakers use. Repeating the Font tag and other tags for every line, even when there is no <BR> (BReak) is totally unecessary and very confusing. It would be better if I had copied and pasted my own HTML document or uploaded it by FTP. But I wanted an example, so here it is, "Garbage" and all!
   AOL Hometown is not my first choice, but you may like it fine.

5. A visitor to this page wrote and suggested MySiteSpace.com, saying "they provide 20 megs free with a very small banner at the bottom of each page." I checked this out and this is true, but they loaded slowly the nite I checked. BigNoseBird.com has a Homesteading Page - with answers to questions like What is Free Hosting?" and what to look for. They recommend NetFirms.Com and VirtualAve.Net, but the reviews were last checked in May 2001.
   With many of the "good" free places either closing or charging fees now, you may have to use one of those mentioned here, or AOL Hometown. OR pay a small amount for adfree space, like with merkury.com

6. Check with your ISP first - almost every ISP provides some free Web space for each customer, and usually there are no pop-up ads etcetera.

The Editor and FTP pages on this site will give you links to easy to use programs. If you need more help learning to use these or with HTML, email HTML Help or  WizeWebWiz

---

Yahoo/Geocities and Homestead I do not recommend. The old Geocities was a great place, but Yahoos changed all that. The TOS (Terms Of Service) is still unacceptable, and I have friends with pages there who keep having access and other problems. Homestead is slow, and puts a million ad cookies on your computer. :o(   A lot of people do like their Page Builder, but it does not do as well as doing your own HTML with a good Editor on your own computer, and then uploading to your Host's server (computer). You can upload with a function for that in all of the above places or by FTP.