Category: Hosting

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Create a Free Blog

Visit the forums and you will find that the debate rages on. Is it better to use a free blog service, or pay for your own domain and hosting? In my opinion the answer is both!

The biggest advantage to having a self hosted blog is that you have the most control over your blog. You can post the ads you want and the content you want.And when you you use a provider such as Hostgator or GoDaddy you can rest assured you will have reliable hosting without too much downtime.

But there are advantages to using a free host. The number one advantage is that it is free! Free blogs are a great way to test the water of blogging. Try it out and get some experience before you actually pay money to blog. Free hosts are also a useful source of backlinks to your regular blogs.

There are some downsides to free hosts. Some will place ads on your sites. Some will not allow you to place your own ads on your site. Read the terms of service carefully and make sure that the host you choose will meet your needs.

Following is a list of free host sites. My favorite, just because it is small and I know the owner is Blogging4Life. My blog there is Katalina Online. Have fun creating your free blogs!

Blogging4life.com
Freeblogs.org
FreeBlogIt.com
Blog.com
MyBlogSite.com
informationjunkie.net
blogsome.com
weebly.com
wordpress.com
blogger.com
livejournal.com
theblogs.net
thoughts.com
webnode.com
blog.co.uk
freeblog.org.uk
bravenet.com
yola.com
webs.com
bloguni.com
sosblog.com
wix.com
doodlekit.com
vox.com
tumblr.com
blogskinny.com
blogeasy.com
blogr.com

 

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How Not to Lose (Too Many) Visitors When You Move Your Site – Part 1

One of the biggest problems about using free webhosts is that in case you decide to move to a paid one, you may lose some visitors in the process. Don’t despair though. There are several things you can do about this.

Redirect your visitors

1. When a webmaster or blogger reveals their plans to move from a free site to a self-hosted, paid one, they’re often told to use 301 redirects. You may click here to learn more about this method. As you’ll see, the main problem about it is that most free webhosts won’t grant you access to your .htaccess (infamous pun intended). And if you’re a non-technical type, the whole 301 redirection thing will look like a nightmare to you.

2. You might go for a meta-refresh HTML tag instead. This one is much easier to do and I’ve used it myself several years ago. The problem is that several years ago I didn’t know this practice might get me into trouble with search engines. At that time I didn’t care anyway, because my site’s traffic was almost exclusively generated by my networking efforts. If that’s your case as well, or if for any other reason you feel that search engine traffic isn’t so important to you, here’s the code you must place on your homepage, inside the HEAD tags:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=http://example.com/">

Replace 5 by the amount of seconds a visitor should wait before being actually redirected to the desired address (represented above by “example.com”). Also make sure to include on your homepage a brief message telling your visitors that your website has been moved and that they’ll be automatically redirected within so many seconds. Include a clickable link right below this message, so people can use it if they don’t want to wait and/or if the redirection fails for any reason.

3. Short URL services are yet another option. You could promote the short URL instead of the actual site address, so that your visitors would always be able to find your site, no matter where it’s hosted. The main issue about such services is the fact that by masking your pages’ addresses, they may hinder search engines from indexing your site. Besides, many spammers make use of URL redirection services, giving them a bad reputation that could hurt you in the end. For instance, when leaving a comment on a blog, you might have it marked as spam if you include a link generated by a short URL service.

If you still want to try an URL redirection service, at least make sure to always use your site’s real address when promoting it or building links for it. Display the short URL somewhere on your site (preferably on the main page) and explain to your visitors that it’s an alternative address that they should save for emergencies, i. e., in case a sudden move is needed, they won’t lose sight of your site (another infamous pun intended).

Would you like to suggest any other ways to redirect visitors to other URLs? Do you want to share any tips or links to helpful services and tutorials? Leave a comment, please.

Redirection isn’t the only way to avoid the loss of visitors when you change your site’s host. I’ll show you other alternatives in my next post. You won’t miss it if you subscribe to The WebMaster Blog now.

Karen Zara has been involved in Internet-based projects since 2002. One of them is Abaminds, a blog for content producers that you can visit by clicking here.

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Web Hosts Dedicated IP vs. Shared IP

Before we get into the reasons a dedicated IP is far more better than a shared IP let’s go over the difference a little. A shared IP would be like getting a birthday cake and sharing it with 10 complete strangers. You don’t know where their hands have been and you don’t know what they’ve done with those hands. A dedicated IP would be like having a birthday cake to yourself. You know exactly where you’ve been and exactly where your hands have been. With the growing number of spammy website’s and black hat webmasters on the internet today, having your website on a shared hosting provider using a shared server IP could get your site blacklisted, blocked, and even penalized by search engines. A dedicated IP is just that, dedicated. Your website is the only website using that IP address meaning you control your own destiny. Many easy website hosting providers offer dedicated IP’s for their customer’s who wish to take advantage of them. Paying the extra $2-$4 a month for a dedicated IP may not be such a bad idea. It could save your hard work from getting blocked by Google, Yahoo, and other popular search engine due to someone else’s bad spamming habits.

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Free Webhosts: Should You Still Care About Them? – Part 3

In the previous part of our free webhosting series, we discussed the advantages to having your sites hosted for free, as opposed to the disadvantages mentioned in the first part.

Now you have enough information to support your decision. If you choose to try a free webhost — even when you are aware of its probable limitations and risks — , there are still several factors that you should take into consideration before picking any company.

Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing a free webhost:

1. Make sure the free webhosting provider offers exactly what you need. Will they let you display your own ads on your pages? Which file types are allowed? Are MySQL databases available to users? Can you build your site from scratch or do you have to stick to pre-made templates?

2. Your site may not need as much bandwidth and disk space as you think. So, don’t get easily impressed at free webhosts that offer vast amounts of either. Otherwise you will expose yourself to the risk of having an unpleasant surprise some months later… when the company modifies their features in the most drastic way possible (in case you’re wondering: yes, it’s happened to me). Please take this piece of advice: pick a free webhost that offers realistic packages.

3. Always take the time to visit several sites or blogs hosted by the free webhosting company you’re interested in. Many free webhosts have directories. Others will display links to some users on their front page. In any case, try to study the sites, analyse their load time and take a good look at the default ads forced by the webhost (if any).

4. If you plan to make money from your site or blog, study all the possibilities *before* starting your site. If you save this task for a later time, you will be disappointed when you are rejected by potential advertisers because your site is hosted for free. So, analyse the money-making opportunities available to free webhosting users before you do anything else.

5. Does the free webhosting provider make it easy to access their sign up page? If it doesn’t, don’t host your site there. I’ve seen a free webhost do a rather ambitious startup campaign, but when I visited their site and tried to register, their sign up page didn’t load. All webhosting companies are subject to downtime, of course. But let’s just say that an inner voice advised me to stay away from that specific one because it had overpromised and underdelivered.

6. Don’t let anyone make you feel less important just because you chose a free webhost. Many (arrogant, prejudiced) people state that they won’t even visit a site if they know it is hosted for free. In fact, some of those people are able to make ruder statements on this subject. They will want to make you feel worthless. Now, tell me: can you please everyone at once? Of course you can’t. So, relax, forget the offences and just do what you feel that is right for you at this moment.

A final word of wisdom that applies to both free and paid webhost users: never ever forget to back up your sites regularly. Don’t rely solely on the back up facilities offered by your webhost, no matter how reliable they appear to be. Bad things can happen to the best companies. Accept this fact and do what you can to prevent the loss of your precious files.

As always, feel free to leave comments and share your own tips and pieces of info regarding free webhosts.

And this is the end of the free webhosting series. Or is it?

While writing this final article, I just came up with enough ideas for a whole new post. So, click here now to subscribe to our feed and you will soon be reading tips on how not to lose visitors when you move from a free webhost to a paid one.

Karen Zara has been involved with Internet-based projects since 2002. She is the creator of Abaminds, a blog for content producers that you can visit by clicking here.

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Free Webhosts: Should You Still Care About Them? – Part 2

In the first part of this series, I talked about the disadvantages to hosting your site or blog for free. In case you think those statements were a bit too radical, let me confess one thing: I agree with you. I do believe that free webhosts aren’t necessarily the root of all evil.

Here are some reasons why free webhosts shouldn’t be totally ignored by webmasters and bloggers:

1. Free! Does that word ring a bell? We all know it does. Although one might say that all free things have little or no value, that’s not always the case. And let’s not forget that there are times in life when our financial issues are so serious that every single penny we can save makes a huge difference to us — or to our family. Besides, depending on the country you live in, paid webhosting may not be as affordable as it’s usually said to be.

2. Is it harder to make money from sites hosted for free? Probably. Is it impossible? Certainly not. There are still some advertisers who will want to buy ad spots and reviews from such sites. Affiliate marketing is another option to take into consideration, as well as certain pay-per-click programs (AdSense anyone?). Several bloggers and webmasters who use free webhosts are generating decent income from their pages. Some of them will even teach you how to achieve similar results.

3. Many of the complaints about free webhosting are made by people who are unable to follow rules. If you choose a free webhost that doesn’t allow adult content and still you insist in running an adult-oriented portal on their servers, you just aren’t entitled to whine when your site is deleted. It’s really that simple.

4. Unstable people shouldn’t spend their money with paid webhosting. Some individuals suddenly fall in love with a singer or band and proceed to create sites, blogs, photoblogs and forums devoted to their idols. A year later they realise that they couldn’t care less. And then they feel a bit ridiculous for having spent money for reasons that now they admit to be futile. If you recognised yourself in this description — replace “singer or band” by any subject that might inspire sudden yet temporary feelings in you –, free webhosting is the way to go.

5. Free webhosts are great for test sites. By the way, I’m going to post a whole series about test sites here. Subscribe to The WebMaster Blog now and you’ll have my new article series delivered to your favourite feed reader within the next weeks.

If you can think of yet more reasons why free webhosts aren’t that evil after all, please post them on the comment form.

In my next article I will give you some advice on when and how to choose a free webhost.

Karen Zara has been involved with Internet-based projects since 2002. She is the creator of Abaminds, a blog for content producers that you can visit by clicking here.