Free Web Hosting Provider

A free web hosting provider is there to offer users free web hosting services if they are unable to afford the higher costs of a shared web hosting package. Free web hosting services normally come with some sort of catch because free web hosting providers need to be able to make a small amount of money in order to pay their own web hosting bills. Such catches may include that you have to put adverts on your website on behalf of your free web hosting provider, or that you have to post on their forums so many times to help them bring in more traffic and advert revenue. Free web hosting providers often offer an unreliable web hosting servers since they tend to be less secure than a standard shared web hosting server and are often more susceptible to malicious attacks for one reason or another. It is now highly recommended that you try and avoid free web hosting as much as possible because shared web hosting packages can now be purchased from as little as $1, meaning that you will get more benefits for $1 such as a secure server than if you were using a free web hosting service. Free web hosting providers also tend to be run by those who don’t have much knowledge when it comes to server management, which is one of the many reasons that free web hosting servers tend to be less secure than standard hosting servers.

Although free web hosting may provide you with a way in which you can host your basic website in a public environment for free, you will find that free web hosting services aren’t as reliable as you would like them to be and that the servers concerned are far from secure. Shared web hosting can provide users with a much more reliable solution, but for someone who solely wants a web hosting account for messing around or testing with then free web hosting will be more than sufficient. Such advantages that you might see in free web hosting may include:

• no money to pay - this is one thing that attracts many to free web hosting services, but although you aren’t paying anything it means that you aren’t going to receive any support for your free web hosting account and also means that your free web hosting server is less likely to be as secure and reliable as you would like it to be
• active community - a majority of free web hosting providers have active communities for you to contribute to, and in order to gain your free web hosting package you are normally required to contribute quite considerably to this active community since it will help the free web hosting provider concerned grow over time
• a proper web hosting package - some free hosting services offer a free web hosting service as such, but in some cases it isn’t a proper web hosting package since you are limited as to what you are able to do with the package, but with a majority of cPanel based free web hosting packages you are provided with access to a control panel allowing you to manage your account properly using a web browser.

Although most people would turn down a free web hosting package as such, some people are just drawn in by the features that are offered since many are close to those that are offered by premium web hosting packages.

Free web hosting providers still need to make use of control panels so that they can manage their servers and so that you as their clients can manage your web hosting account in the same way that you would with a Linux based shared web hosting account. A majority of free web hosting providers base their servers on the Linux operating system since it is free to use and provides them with a server that they can easily manage and administrate. On top of Linux servers, free web hosting providers tend to use the cPanel control panel as their control panel of choice because it is cheap to purchase but still provides them and their users with an easy to use interface. Shared Linux hosting packages tend to be based on servers of the same type, but the servers themselves are like to be alot more secure since premium web hosting providers have the money to spend on experienced support technicians who are able to secure their web hosting servers properly to make sure that they cannot be hacked or attacked my malicious attackers who wish to take them down. If you wish to use a free web hosting provider then it is recommended that you use one that allows you access to a control panel so that you can take control of your free web hosting package then you need to without having to rely on anyone else.

Although you may be attracted to using a free web hosting package because of the sole fact that you don’t need to pay anything for the right to have a web hosting account, you may want to consider the advantages of having a shared web hosting account that you have actually paid for than having a free web hosting service that you aren’t paying anything for. Such advantages of having a shared web hosting account over a free web hosting service include:

• reliability - since you are paying for your web hosting account, premium web hosting providers are able to afford support technicians meaning that they can look after the servers professionally which also means that they are going to be more secure than free web hosting servers and therefore more reliable
• support - because a premium web hosting provider is able to afford support techicians, they are more likely to be able to provide you with 24×7 web based support which means that you can get in contact with them at any time of the day if you find that you have a problem with the web hosting package that you have purchased from them
• resources - if you have a web hosting account that you have paid for then you are going to be guaranteed greater resources than you would have been assigned if you had a free web hosting services, meaning that you certainly get value for money in terms of disk space and bandwidth with shared web hosting services.

The above are just a small part of the long list of advantages that shared hosting can bring you if you are upgrading from a free web hosting service. Shared web hosting is not only secure but is highly reliable if you source it from a web hosting provider that has a good reputation and a good uptime record.

Although you may find managing a shared web hosting account is very similar to managing a free web hosting account, there are many differences that you will encounter and may want to investigate in order to help you boost your knowledge. Boosting your knowledge is important since it will help you in the future, and as you gain knowledge it will also help you to upgrade your web hosting experience over time until you own a dedicated server. Such things you may want to learn could include:

• PHP - a majority of free web hosting services don’t allow you to host PHP pages and scripts for the main reason that they see it as a security risk, whereas a majority of shared web hosting providers do allow you to host such pages meaning that it is a scripting language which is worth learning if you are own shared web hosting
• other programming languages - as well as PHP, there are many other programming languages that you may want to learn if they are supported on your shared web hosting package, and by learning multiple languages you are diversifying your knowledge which could help you in the future as the languages used chop and change
• MySQL - PHP is also used in conjunction with MySQL so that web developers can create database driven sites for hosting in a Linux web hosting environment, and because of this you may also find it helpful in the future if you are able to create databases for use with your PHP pages as well as just using static web pages.

Learning some of the stuff listed above could always help you in future if you are asked to build a complex website for someone, and having advnaced knowledge could always increase your job prospects in the future.

In conclusion, free web hosting providers offer a good way for you to get started with web hosting, but at the end of the day you can’t beat a premium web hosting service that offers you a reliable web hosting package along with full support that you can take advantage of when you need to. If you find free web hosting attractive, but want to host your website in a reliable environment then it would probably be better for your needs if you considered a premium web hosting package that would promise you reliability.

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