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mrx3
8,742 PointsI found a supposed "Free Website hosting" Is this true, or is it a complete scam?
I found two of these webhosting companies. I'm not affiliated with either of these companies, or anything. The only reason I'm asking is, because I would like to upload a practice site to see what the site will look like live, and then take the site down. It would be cool to practice what we learn, and upload the sites because, a site might look different from one launched from your text-editor. The one site has PHP which would be cool when I start to learn and practice PHP, and can upload a small PHP site, and then take the site down if the site looks okay or, tune up the site to make it look better. Any way the links are below. Let me know what you guys think.
5 Answers
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsI know nothing about those two, but wouldn't a local server on your personal computer solve this issue?
mrx3
8,742 PointsHi Kevin, I've never heard of that before. Can you explain please.
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsFor PC I use Xampp https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html and for my Mac I use Mamp http://www.mamp.info/en/
No particular reason because Xampp now works on Max and Wamp is the windows version of Mamp. Basically it comes with Apache and MySQL bundled together.
These programs give you a spot where to save your web files. And than, when you have your programs running, you just use whatever browser you want on your computer and type "localhost" in the url bar. If you have multiple files in this directory usually called "htdocs" that are multiple websites, you just type "localhost/this-projects-name".
I have about a dozen websites accessible by my local server. Both wordpress and non wordpress site. The beautiful part is I can save a file in my text editor, and than refresh the browser and the changes are instant. I don't have to FTP the files to the server first.
And it's pretty secure, since this site is not "live" on the internet, just on your local computer.
michaelyanchar
13,563 PointsAs stated above a local server will provide you with the same outcome as a web hosting service and is something you should practice and utilize while creating your own websites or applications. Free hosting services or ones that provide unlimited bandwidth often have some sort of fine print which will cause more headaches than they are worth. http://webhostingforstudents.com/ is an affiliate of treehouse and provides hosting for $25/year if you're looking for dirt cheap hosting.
mrx3
8,742 PointsNice, I'll have to check that out. Thank you for the help Michael!!!!
victor wang
3,773 PointsI signed up with webhostingforstudents.com for a year because it was recommended by one of the courses I took in Treehouse. What a ripoff. I signed up in January for the year and in April I decided to cancel the recurring payment for the following year for no reason other than moving on with life. They immediately took down my page in April and revoked all access to it. I submitted a ticket to find out why and they replied they had transferred my page to another server and that I had to wait "some time" to have access again. Weeks later and I still haven't heard anything. Be warned. I just wanted to warn others the way I wished someone would have warned me. Had I known I wouldn't have signed up.
Joseph Potts
11,187 PointsI use 000webhost at the moment (proof at www.purgified.com ) so I know they're definitely reliable. Plus they're quite old and are pretty much the best resource for free web hosting. The only compromise for me is that they put ads on every page of your site.
James Barnett
39,199 PointsAn ad free option is http://www.hostinger.co.uk/
mrx3
8,742 PointsThanks for the input Joseph!
mrx3
8,742 PointsI have heard of Xampp, I have to check that out. Thanks Kevin for help, much appreciated !!!!!!
mrx3
8,742 PointsJust set-up my Xampp software, and it's working awesome. I checked 3 of my sites so far using the access localhost with my files in the htdocs folder, and they look great. Getting really pumped up and happy with the way this new adventure is going. Thanks Gildo, Kevin, Michael, Joseph, and James. Without your help I wouldn't have even known about using Xampp to view my pages.
Gildo Santana
3,184 PointsGildo Santana
3,184 PointsI never heard of any of those companies, but this Zymic doesn't look very trustworthy. The 000webhost at least explicitly has a "premium" plan. For the strict purposes you metioned, maybe it's worth a try, provided you don't enter any payment info. Perhaps, instead of looking for free hosts, you should find some cheap host, like iPage, BlueHost, FatCow and many many others.
My main piece of adivce, however, is: beware of hosts that offer "free domains", because, well, they'll basically own the domain. I've had trouble with that a few years ago here in Brazil, with .com.br domains, and also have a friend who contributes to a big blog that also lost their .com domain for the same reason. When they switched hosts, the previous host let the domain expire and someone registered the domain and tried to sell it for a very high price. In my country's case (.br ccTLD) there's only one legitimate registrar. For .com domains, there are many options, I have used GoDaddy in the past, recently I registered at hover.com and am satisfied.
If you want to play with PHP, perhaps in the future you might consider playing in a VPS provider. DigitalOcean has become quite a thing, althouogh I haven't tried it yet.