There are plenty free domain names you can get, but most are long and rather ugly. Mine is from a website called uni.cc (www.uni.cc) if you aren't googling it already. You can choose to have your freebie hosting forwarded or do a real deal DNS update which many free domain hosts don't offer. They are ad free, and only ask you place a small button on your page (like the one at the bottom of mine) stating you are a member of the uni.cc network. I like this site best, but there are plenty others you can grab up with extensions like .co.nr, .zap.to, ect.
Okay, we've got a free name! Next on our list is web hosting.
Webhosting
Since I've not got around to the other project i've reminded myself about (Home server/media center) it's time to get some free hosting! I've found many hosts; some better than others. Here's my top list for you to pick from!
#1 Freehostia (www.freehostia.com)
* Disk Space: 250 MB
* Traffic 5Gb
* 2 Domains
* 1 MySQL Database
* Their ads? No
* Your ads? Yes
* Custom 404 Pages
#2 Awardspace (www.awardspace.com)
* Disk Space: 200MB
* Traffic: 5GB
* 2 Domains
* 1 MySQL Database
* Their Ads?: No
* Your Ads?: Yes
The above listed providers have many other features available. There's one thing I dislike about Awardspace.. if a visitor encounters an error on one of your pages they are directed to the providers homepage with no back link or explanation for the error! I went with Free Hostia since I can edit my own 404s. However, you can get more space, traffic, ect. by allowing ads - That opens up your options a lot, but this should be fine for a personal page.
Html Editors
Now that we have a place to park we need to get ourselves a car! Usually webhosting editors leave much to be desired if you're not an html wizard, but fear not. You can download many external programs to make this task much easier for you! If you are not very good at html you'll want something with a WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) editor. There are plenty of these out there both commerical and open source.
I'm using Kompozer (www.kompozer.net) for my editing needs. You can open an existing document, or create a new one. If you have any experience with simple html at all this program will serve you well. For more advanced users you can edit in raw source code, there's a preivew button, view in browser option, ect. ect. All for zero dollars.
There are many other options that offer trial periods or 'restricted versions such as FirstPage, Coffee Cup, ect. I was using firstpage, but it started crashing on me as soon as they added the teaser wanting you to buy their full version..Don't know if they've fixed it or not since then, but you can check it out.
RSS, and updating feeds
----------------------- The newest thing i'm playing with is what you're reading! I wanted an easier way to do site updates, and integrating a blog seemed a great way to go. I messed with some things, and decided I like blogger the very best.
If you'd like to use blogger (www.blogger.com) on your website - I've found FTP to be the easiest way for me.
1. Go to your blogger homepage.
2. Click the Settings tab--- > Select "Publishing"
3. Choose the 'Publish via FTP option.
Now you need to enter your upload information. The FTP server information will be given to you somewhere on your host's page. You'll need to enter..
1. Your host's address FTP server address
2. Blog url (Enter the homepage address if you want the blog there.)
3. Enter the FTP path (/www.yourpage.com/ for the homepage.)
4. Enter your FTP Username and Password.
You can leave everything else alone - As they don't need to be edited to get it working. Click save, and blogger will ask if you want to republish. If you have blogs posted already click 'yes', and they will be uploaded to your webpage instead of blogger's pages.
If you want to change your site's front page content you can visit blogger, and post as normal. When you publish your site will get some new content for your visitors! There's an option to subscribe, view archives, recent posts, ect. So if your friends, family, co-workers, ect. are fans of google reader like I am they can subscribe to your webby, and be notified when you post something new!
Search engines
----------------
Something else that's a little irritating to find is a search engine. One that will send results of YOUR site, and not results of others from google. Most of them want some massive monthly, yearly, first born, fee to use theirs or you need the technical know how to code your own.
There are several free ones you can use. Google themselves make a site search - Though there's was not working well for me for some reason. So I went with Free Find (www.freefind.com). All you do is sign up, paste the code, have them spider your site, and you have a search for your site.
It'll search all the pages you have, and collect results for your users if you have lots of blogs or files to look through. They offer this service ad free save one banner/small text ads on top of the results page which are not very obtrusive.
enjoy and let comment.
Enregistrer un commentaire