Which type of website is best for you?
Posted by David on April 12th, 2006 filed in TutorialsWhich Website Creation Option Is Best For You?
There is never one hosting option that’s best for every website. Some of you may just want a small “About Me” personal website, others may want a larger, more interactive website for personal or business reasons.
Be sure you’ve made up your mind about the type of site you want to build because it has a great impact on the type of host you need.
Most web hosts don’t help you with the pre-planning process. They just want you to sign up so they can host your site and collect your money. I created this page so you don’t jump into the process too fast and make the wrong decisions.
“What is a web host?”
A web host is the backbone of any website and no site can exist without one. The web host is responsible for providing you with the space for building your web pages, setting up your email accounts (if any), giving you the option of setting up additional functionality for your site (message boards, order forms, games), etc.
Important: Not all web hosts allow you to add additional functionality and other interactive features, so that’s why it’s important that you read this page in its entirety. You don’t want to start building your website and then discover you can’t accomplish what you want with the host you’ve chosen.
“I want a free site.”
Don’t we all. :) I would love to tell you that a free web host will allow you to create an outstanding site that attracts lots of visitors. Unfortunately that is a difficult feat to accomplish these days.
I tried going the free route but all my sites were eventually wiped out because the companies either shut down or I left because I wanted to add things to my site that just wasn’t possible because of technical constraints. It was frustrating.
Free web hosts are very limited in what you are allowed to do. They don’t give you your own domain (anyname.com). So your website address will be something like http://www.freesitehost.com/members/yoursite.html. They don’t allow you to add any additional functionality to your site so if you plan on adding order forms, chat rooms, games etc. you can forget it.
The search engines also don’t have much respect for them so it’s very difficult to get your site listed in places like Google, MSN and Yahoo. That’s a BIG problem if you plan on getting free traffic from all over the web. I get 90% of my traffic from the search engines and I can almost guarantee that would not have been the case had I chosen a free web host.
The only reason I’d suggest a free site is if you are a kid and are not old enough to register your own domain. Or perhaps you just need a temporary site for school or a one-time event. You also can’t be expecting much in terms of the look and feel because free websites look cheesy. Most of them require you to display banners and/or pop ups and the design options are very limited.
Web surfers can generally spot a free site from a mile away and that might hurt your credibility. This is especially true if you are creating a business or ecommerce website.
Most free website providers also do not offer any email accounts so you’ll probably have to use your existing email accounts instead of having an account that matches your site’s domain (you@yourdomain.com).
As you can see, I’m not a fan of them. Especially because the price of web hosting has come down so much over the years. In my opinion, it’s worth paying a few bucks per month for a site because you have the peace of mind knowing it will be there as long as you need it. There are no guarantees with free web hosts.
Updated: 2006
There are some free hosting I think is good enough. Something like Google Pages, or
Blog type space, like MSN spaces
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