It is very crucial for a new online business to keep their costs down. To cut cost they believe to go with free web hosting services. If you already have a website then you might be familiar with few free hosting websites. Websites like Blogger, Squidoo, and MySpace are some of the sites people are using these days. But, is it a wise decision to use free web hosting services to save few bucks?

Well, answer to this question is a big “NO”! Free web hosting is not the best bet for long run. Free web hosting will not provide you quality services for long run. But, in the inception of the business you may use free hosting services to keep the cost down. Free hosting services are only perfect for new businesses, but remember to keep the free options as the temporary stepping stone because later you may need to switch to paid alternative to reap maximum benefits from web hosting.

Alike other businesses, in web hosting also you get what you pay for. Free web hosting is the perfect selection for personal purposes like to gain some experiences, hobby websites and setting up family websites. Moreover, when you use free web hosting services the web hosting company becomes authorized to post banner ads on your website. The hosting company actually earns money from these ads. As a businessman, you should only allow to display the ads that are paid, not the free ones.

Loads of headaches are associated with free hosting services and as a result you will search for some other paid alternative to get rid from these headaches. The process of hosting a website may seem complicated and confusing and sometime all your efforts and hard work will go in vain. As an online business owner you need to invest in core infrastructure in order to reap maximum benefits later. So, it is always better to opt for paid hosting instead of free one.

To avail the services of a quality web hosting you don’t need to burn a hole in your pocket. There are many web hosting companies out there offering affordable hosting services.

In free hosting services the business owners don’t need to pay a single penny to get online presence. However, it is quite difficult to find out the advantages that a person obtains from free services. The major benefit you will obtain is that you don’t need to pay anything to host your website. Instead, the list of disadvantages may go lengthier than benefits. The free hosting services are hardly concerned about the websites. If you prefer to use free hosting services, then you may get ready to find some other paid alternative because the online presence of your website will not last for longer. Moreover, the downtime offered by free services is never ending. Besides, the disk space and bandwidth offered is not sufficient. The list of disadvantages is never ending for free services. Most importantly, the chance of being hacked and spammed is also higher with free hosting services. In free hosting services you don’t pay anything so you should not expect anything in return!

Now, you might have come to know about the downside and positive points of free hosting services. Well, it will be easier for you now to make informative and correct decision in terms of web hosting. In sake of saving money you should not just go ahead and opt for free hosting services. Instead, you may go for paid ones if you want to reap maxim benefits. If you need help, check out our awesome web host shopping guide; or read our hosting review for start.

Most of the people don’t understand the connection between the offline world and online world. You may understand the side of your personal computer, and may also have some information about the online world, but do you know how these two are connected. If you want to offer some important or usual content to others, you should have some knowledge of hosting and domain name. If you really want to your stuff to get uploaded onto the world wide web (www) then you would need to understand the concept of FTP.

What FTP means?

FTP stands for” File Transfer Protocol” and it is commonly used to exchange important files. FTP (File Transfer Protocol), can be simply called as the way to exchange important files between your computers and on the Internet. FTP is mostly used when you transfer your Files back and forth for your own personal website or blog. To understand well the term FTP, you will first need to understand the basics of how the world of internet or websites work.

Every website on internet world is hosted by a "server". Servers can refer as place where all the online information is physically stored. When you use internet to browse any website and you download something from that website, you start the transferring of the file from its website server onto your computer’s hard drive. The website just acts like a medium where you go to make this happen. Let’s take another example; emails are very important part of our business and daily work. Have you ever thought where and how all your emails are stored, they are all stored on the website’s server that manages all your emails whether its yahoomail, gmail etc. Also, when you use "Microsoft Outlook", you actually transfer your emails to your database from the website’s server.

Importance of FTP

FTP is extremely important, without FTP your website won’t be of much use. Without it you can’t post pictures, videos or anything else which is important to make your website work as expected by you. Once you become comfortable with FTP then you will be able to transfer large files without worrying about the size limits of your email server. To better understand this; let’s say if you want to send 1gb file to your colleague, then in this case to upload such a big file you can send your file via ftp server. For this you will first need a download link which you can send your colleague. Without FTP, it would be almost impossible to send big file.

So, in order to download something from your or some other website, it has to be first placed on the server. The process for this includes Uploading or transferring the information to the server and then creating web link that will allow others to download the information from the server. Here comes the use of FTP to put the information onto the server. It’s an extension that you add to the internet browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc and then it allows you to transfer files from the website’s server to your computer. Some famous FTP clients are WinSCP (Windows), Transmit (Mac OS X), FireFTP (All Platforms with Firefox), FileZilla (All Platforms) etc.

Being able to use FTP is very simple once you understand it. FTP is such an important tool which will give you huge advantages and will make you understand how the internet works. Besides this, it will allow you to do and get more with less hassle.

With the advent of technology, computers have gained much more importance in the modern day world. They have become the basic necessity of our lives and highly fulfill the needs in a wide range of fields. Internet also plays a great role in this field and helps the users in performing their tasks in an easy manner. You can find innumerable websites on the internet while searching for something. These websites form the basis of search from where you can gain every bit of data required by you. Owning a website was a complex process in the recent past. But nowadays, it has become much easier to develop your own website. If you are also willing to design your own website, then this article is going to help you a great deal.

Creating a website requires knowledge of some simple terms. The basic terms related to this task are web hosting and Domain names. Further in this article, these terms are discussed in detail.

Web Hosting

Web hosting is a type of internet service that allocates space to the customers which can be used by them to develop their websites. These websites are created on the high powered computer servers that make your website accessible by the World Wide Web. The web hosts are the companies providing space on the server that is either owned by them or leased for the use of the clients. They also provide connectivity to the internet so that the websites can be accessed from other servers. This process is generally termed as collocation or housing.

Types of Web Hosting

There are different types of web hosting that fulfill the needs of different customers and websites.

Shared Web Hosting

This type of hosting is the easiest way to start on your work. In this type of hosting a single server is shared among many customers. The major advantage of shared web hosting is that it is easier to use with the preconfigured options and the maintenance of the website is done by the host. It is also a cheaper means of occupying space on the web.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting offers an opportunity to the customers to make full use of the entire server and its resources for their personal use. This type of hosting is highly flexible in nature, allowing the users to use the specific software and hardware to fulfill their needs. You can manage the server and configure it as per your requirements. Therefore, you need to possess some technical knowledge in this regard.

Domain names

Domain names are the identification strings that identify the websites in the internet. The formation of these names is based on the rules and regulations of the DNS (Domain Name System). Domain names provide identification to your website address and are used in naming various applications and in networking contexts. It generally represents the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the resource. The internet system recognizes the IP address of the resource not the domain names, so the web servers involve a Domain name System that translates these names into Internet Protocol addresses.

This can be understood with the help of an example. If we take the url = http://www.john.com, url john.com is the domain name that offers recognition to your resource. In every url there is a top level domain attached as a suffix. The most common top level domains which can be acquired by you include .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .name, .edu, .in etc. Every domain name represents a specific group like the .edu domain name represents an educational institution, .org represents non-profit organizations etc.

So, web hosting and domain names are interlinked to a great extent as if you are planning to create a website, you are surely going to need a domain name for it.

With the advent of Internet in the modern day business world and the development of some immensely beneficial tools, website creation has become quite an easy task. In the past few years, building a website was a heck of a task, because of the involvement of a great deal of complex processes and procedures. But now, the process has become much easier. All you need is a professional website building software or a free downloadable version. Now you need to follow the instructions mentioned in the software tutorial. If you are looking forward to create a professional looking website for promoting your business, you can perform a pretty good job with a professional site builder.

With the help of a site builder, you cannot only create a professional looking website without any technical knowhow, but getting ahead of your competitors will also be quite easy. Further, I have mentioned some steps that will help you in knowing the working of a sitebuilder. Make sure that you go through the below mentioned points carefully in order to know how does a sitebuilder works.

• First of all, you are required to select a suitable type of website for your business. You have to choose from among a website having lot of pictures or a website having simple homepage and have more room for text content.
• Secondly, you need to select a suitable sitebuilder for creating a website for your business as per the type of website you chose. You can choose from among a professional website builder or a free downloadable sitebuilder and follow the instruction manual carefully.
• As soon as you get a sitebuilder and its ready begin the show, you need to direct the sitebuilder to start the website creation process by selecting a suitable template. There will be thousands of templates kept before you. These templates are normally categorized into business and private heads. Inside each of these main categories, you will find a number of sub categories like hobbies, financial services, real estate, travel, leisure, baby, educational, technology, communication and many others. You can choose a suitable one as per the niche of your website.
• Next, you need to choose an adequate design from among hundreds of designs available in each template provided by the sitebuilder. You can choose a suitable design as per your needs and requirements. You can select a design with the most appealing format and image style as per your area of work.
• Now, the sitebuilder will allow you to choose the color palatte. You will be provided by a wide gamut of colors and you can choose the most suitable one as per your taste and preference.
• Adding the date is the next step in the working process of a sitebuilder. The sitebuilder software will allow you to personalize your webpage and include the necessary details like the company name, the company’s slogan or the tagline, permanent office address, e-mail ID’s, contact numbers and others.
• Now, you are provided with an option of adding the desired number of pages to your website. Some of the most common pages include contact page, about us, photo album, personal details and others.
• Final Preview and Live show is the last step in the working of sitebuilder. You will be provided by a real demo of your webpage. You can make necessary editions in your page and make the confirmation. At your single click, the sitebuilder will make your website live.

Many shared hosting providers offer SiteBuilder for free to their users; for instance: FatCow, iPage and WebHostingHub. Follow the link and read out review on those web hosts to learn more.

The economic recession has not only affected the financial conditions of the individuals but also a large number of business houses are affected by the same. As a result, businesses are adopting the path of free web hosting as a cost effective option. However, free of cost web hosting looks great only because of the monetary reasons. Adopting the free of cost is not always the best option as far as web hosting is concerned. It may in turn cost a lot to your business in the long run. Further in this article, I have highlighted some main points that will provide an answer to the most debated question of Why Is Free Web Hosting Not Recommended?

Free web hosting services are available especially for those individuals who want to create sites for interests and hobbies. After all, no one prefers to pay monthly fee for the services which are available for free! However, the bitter truth is that free web hosting services are not always free. You may need to pay huge amount of mount for not selecting paid hosting service. Here is why:

Firstly, you will be given very small disk space to deal with. When it comes to create personal websites, then free hosting services can be considered. But, the things change when it comes to create commercial websites because the disk space provided by the free hosting provider is not sufficient for the features and files you want to insert in your website.

Secondly, no individual domain name will be provided to you. Instead, you will be provided with a long domain name which is the sub-domain name of the host. If in case you want to create credibility over internet, then free hosting is not best bet for you especially for ecommerce websites.

Thirdly, server crashes and hosting downtime are the two things associated with free hosting which will leave you behind with frustration. In free hosting the users will be sharing servers will hundred other sites and due to limited bandwidth the user suffers from such problems. In paid hosting services, you will be supported by the customer care and they will keep the server functioning all the time. The tech support will address the downtime issues immediately and also reboot the system for better performance. This type of customer support is not possible with free web hosting.

Fourthly, free web hosting service providers simply disappear. Yahoo Geocities is the biggest example of free web hosting company that disappeared after offering hosting services for few years. When the hosting company disappears, the domain names also disappear along with them. Keeping backups of files or transferring data to another site will not work in such cases because you would not have the similar web address and as a result you have to initiate again from zero. This becomes a frustrating process especially if you have already created following for your previous website and numerous links. The entire process of gaining search engine rankings will start again from zero and it is simply a time consuming process.

Lastly, all types of pop ups and banner ads will appear on your website through which the free hosting services earn money. With free hosting services you will not get any domain, therefore the hosting providers are authorized to put all types of banner ads and pop ups on your website to earn money. These ads make your website look unprofessional and also discourage the web traffic.
Now you might have come to know why free web hosting is not recommended. So, rather than wasting your time in free hosting you should invest in paid services.

So in case you now want a paid hosting, be sure you check out some of our popular hosting reviews, including WebHostingHub Review, iPage Review, Hostgator Review, FatCow Review, and GreenGeeks Review.