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Web Hosting
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THE RIGHT STUFF is hosted at www.pair.com, whose prices are extremely reasonable. (Their starting rate for virtual domain hosting is $5.95 US a month.) They allow CGI access, which is important if you want to use message boards, response forms, and other scripts.
Then there are the free servers. Foremost among this generous breed is Yahoo!Geocities, which in its infancy only offered 2MGs free; if you needed more you signed up for GeoPlus member services at a low cost per month. Now they offer 15 MGs, and other free webhosting sites have rushed in to create competition. Below are some of the most popular 'freebies', with links to their home pages and details about what sort of package they offer.
FETISHVILLE- is a cool little community catering to music fans. You get 5 free MGS, which you pay for by erecting advertising banners on your site. There is no CGI access, which means you can't use message boards or other scripts unless you link to a script-oriented page. One of its biggest attractions is that you can edit your site directly through the Fetishville page, eliminating the need for FTP knowledge and access.
PROHOSTING- offers a whopping 50 MEGS of hard disk space for free, and CGI/SSI scripts. It does not, however, support FrontPage 98 extensions.
YAHOO!GEOCITIES- one of the oldest and largest free website communities on the Net. Offers 15 free MGS, custom Java Applets, guestbooks, and a PageBuilder wizard for those with zero knowledge of how to put together a website or write HTML. The Geocities E-Z File Upload option allows you to upload files from your hard drive directly into your Geocities webspace without need for an FTP client. The only real disadvantage to this old favorite is the annoying Yahoo! advertising window that appears to the left of your screen.
CYBERCITIES- offers 25 free megs and the added bonus of no mandatory Cybercities advertising in exchange for the space. Large bandwidth, email address, and page builder support. The only potentially negative feature is that MP3s are not permitted, so any DOA audio files will have to be in Real format.
ANGELFIRE- another longstanding, favorite web hosting site. You start out with 5 MEGS, and as you use it up, you are awarded additional 5 MEG installments to a max of 30 MEGS. You get a free email address, CGI scripts and a Java library, and much more. One of the best!! (Although you pay for the 'free' space by putting up with an annoying pop-up ad.)
These are just a few. Your best bet is to look into who hosts a site you're particularly fond of, or type 'free webhosting' into a major search engine and checking out the growing list of responses. Have a look at sample sites on each server and check out terms of use.
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Choosing a web host is a tricky endeavor. When shopping around, make sure that the host has been in business for awhile, and even check the service bulletins section on their home page to see whether frequent 'maintenance' takes place. A lot of downtime can mean frustration for your visitors and of course you.