incessant ramblings

I know some people have been asking how to get their sites on the web. The first step is getting hosting.

There are a few different types of hosting, which range from free to quite expensive.

Free hosts I usually do not recommend. On those that I've tried in the past, the servers are generally slow, require that you put ads on your page, and are very limited on the type of stuff you can do. If you're not interested in php scripts (forums, wordpress blogs, etc), and dont care about ads, then it probably wouldn't matter for you. Because I haven't used free hosts in a loooong while, I can't really recommend any specific ones.

The type I recommend is not so cheap, but it's worth it. Hosting from places like Dreamhost and 1and1 actually are not bad for the price you pay. They provide lots of space, database hosting, mail service and more. When I signed up for Dreamhost 2 years ago I payed a promotional price of $22 for the first year with 1 free domain. We now pay $120 per year for hosting, plus $10 each for the 6 domains we own (and we can register more any time we want). We use only a tiny fraction of what's offered to us (5/650GB space and about 50GB/8TB bandwidth per month). And now they are offering us UNLIMITED space! Hah, like we need it...but why not take it anyway?! It's definitely been worth it.

So that's my suggestion. Sure you have hosting now through the school, but that's going to be gone soon. Free hosting is nice because it's free...but you definitely don't have as much freedom unless you pay!