Free websites

You want a free site? Relax!  There are wonderful free websites out there that take care of everything. All you have to do is show up!

Blogs
Blogs are personal sites owned by a diverse array of people.  Some are like online diaries - while others are megasites offering updates on technology and news many times a day.
They can be used for everything from a site dedicated to your pet treefrog to a business site with a focus on making money.

There are a lot of different blogging sites that you can sign up with.

Examples:

Blogger
Extremely simple to use. You can add photos and videos to your blog entries. Owned by Google.
blogger.com

Blog
Again, super simple. Fun and easy, with an option to upgrade.
blog.com

Wordpress
There is a bit more of a learning curve with Wordpress, but it still has a solid reputation of being the best blogging software there is - and for good reason. It allows you to easily network with other bloggers and allows a lot of customization.
For a beginner to making websites, the best place to download Wordpress is from Fantastico - which comes free with many web hosts. Fantastico is a collection of great (free) scripts.
wordpress.org



Social networking sites
You may think of facebook.com and myspace.com when you think of social networking sites. But there are other contenders that will have you producing a site that looks more like an everyday website. Blogs are often also social networking sites.

Examples:

Freewebs
Slick and professional-looking, you can create a number of pages and fill them with all sorts of goodies, such as widgets.
www.members.freewebs.com

Squidoo
Squidoo is about sharing your 'knowledge and passion' with the world. You can also share your online business. Squidoo has a very clean, exciting interface and allows anyone to have their own one-page website.
www.squidoo.com

Weebly
Weebly looks good, and allows you a site and a blog. You will need your own domain name, or pay to register one of theirs.
www.weebly.com



Free web hosting
There are more free web hosts out there than you can poke a stick at!  Some will ply your site with ads (including the worst of all - the pop-up ad) Others will not place ads on your site, hoping that you will like their hosting so much that you will sign up for paid hosting with them. Which, if you're happy with them, you may well do.

The better kinds of free web hosts can run a complex website, with all or most of the features of a paid webhost. Many however, will not guarantee the uptime precentage of their servers. Obviously, this is not good enough if you are running any kind of serious business.

You will need to design your website (using FrontPage or other site builder), and FTP your pages to the root directory of your file manager.

Warning - free webhosts will generally not offer support. So if you have no idea how to upload your website using FTP, or if the look of the backend control panel gives you hives - a free web host may give you weeks of frustration.
Free websites may also disappear without notice - which could mean that your whole website disappears too!

On the other hand, some web hosting that you pay for may give pretty patchy support - the support can be so basic and unhelpful that a newbie is left not knowing which way to turn. It can be an awful experience.
There are good reasons why many people opt for a professional to come in and do the whole website for them - and let them get on with business, or with their life!

You have the option of using your own domain name (which you have paid for and registered) or use a second-level domain name of the web host. For example, if this website offered free domain names (we don't!) you could have a site named   yoursite/make-website.com

If you are just dabbling - you have nothing to lose by giving free web hosting a try!
Just be sure to have a backup of all your files on the hard drive of your computer!



Examples:

Zymic
Free templates, tutorials and free hosting.
http://www.zymic.com/

Freewebsites
These offer a free site builder as well as free hosting. They do place an ad on your site though.
http://www.freewebsites.com

Freehostia
Freehostia is offering two domains with their free hosting package, plus they state very fast server speeds.
http://freehostia.com/