It seems nowadays it is very hard to find a webhost that satisfies your needs, if you plan to put up a non-profit, highly informal personal site that looks good and lets you use all those cheesy scripts one sees on paid hosts.
Today, reading my round of daily feeds, I found AwardSpace, and I was awed by their features.
Don't get me wrong... I know many of these hosts die away unexpectedly because they offer too much for too little (or even for nothing) and that quickly puts them out of business.
However, awardspace seems to be fairly reliable (I wouldn't trust it with important data, mind you) for small personal sites, or for those of you wishing to try out your madskillz at webdesign.
For as much as $0.00 you get (and I'll copy and paste from the site):
200MB Disk Space
5GB Monthly Traffic
2 Domains Hosting
5 Subdomains
Free DNS Server
PHP, Perl/CGI-BIN
1 MySQL Database
FTP/FrontPage Access
5 POP3/IMAP E-mails
Instant Account Setup
Web-based File Manager
Easy-to-use Control Panel
Reliable RAID Backups
GRID Hosting Platform
Super Fast Servers
Reliable Data Center
99.8% Uptime Guarantee
24x7 Network Monitoring
Forum Support
NO BANNER ADS
Fully Upgradeable
This sounds quite good to me.
I have just signed up for an account in order to try it. I already have a webhost and I'll be sticking to it for as long as it holds on together. D=
For the basic type of account (that is the free one) you get a file size limit of 500KB (half a megabyte) which prevents you from uploading media. I think this is reasonable considering they are providing a free service. You don't get SMTP either; which means mail-scripts will not be able to send e-mails, but I doubt many people in my flist are benefiting from this option.
You do get traffic statistics, usage reports, ssh (again, I doubt anyone in my flist benefits from this option), mailing lists manager (careful with that!), php, database, email filters, spam protection, cronjobs, and a bunch of other options that are undoubtedly interesting. Especially for a FREE webhost.
If you don't have a domain name, you can assign it a free one. If you do have a domain name, you can easily direct it to your account. =]
Most importantly, your website will be hosted on a unix-like server (ie: linux) which makes it more stable and reliable than any windows-based server can ever dream of being. Plus, you don't need to contact your sysadmin eeeeeevery time you need to change file permissions (which is, once again, something I doubt lots of people in my flist do... You all seriously need to be geeked up by me -safe for a couple of exceptions-).
You can try uploading content management software like joomla! or mambo. Or blogging/journalism stuff like wordpress; discussion boards, image galleries (teh-yum!) e-commerce solutions, etc.
If you want to get a free domain name, but you don't know how to do it, head towards http://www.freedomain.co.nr/ to get an http://www.yourname.co.nr domain. =] All they ask is
1) a link back to co.nr (a small button)
2) valid personal information
co.nr has a 2 months inactivity limit, after which they will delete your account without notice.
I've been using godaddy.com for paid domain names. They don't charge much and they are good.
co.nr also offers a cheap domain registration service, for US$5.99 a year per domain name. In this case, since you are paying for it, you don't have a two-months inactivity limit. =]
If you know of other free-domain services, please let me know. ^^
So, I guess everyone can get started learning website-building basics, or advanceds (XDD), or those of you wishing to try out new things but not wanting to risk ruining your paid website, you could use this kind of service to do so (which is what I plan to do, btw). I'll be looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with, if you want to share it. I will share mine as soon as I've put something pretty in it. ^-^ (Mostly pictures of my kitties, hahaha)
Right now, I'm off to dine out with friends. ^_^v
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