Choosing a host for your philosophy websites
Once you have created your site you are going to need a host. You can choose a free host or you can pay for hosting. Why pay for something you can get for free? Well as they say, you get what you pay for, and when you don't pay much you don't get much! Actually, paid hosting should cost you no more than £5 a month, any more than that is unnecessary. But first, let's have a look at the difference when you choose free hosting over paid hosting. Choosing free web hosting over paid hostingFree web hosting has the major advantage of being free! Often all you need to get your site hosted is to enter your choosen username, password and an email address. Free hosts such as Yahoo's geocities have an html editor which means that you can create your site without having to use an external FTP program. This means you could create a site and host it after a couple of hours in your college or university computer room. The disadvantage of free hosting is that you will only get a limited service. The amount of webspace will be smaller than you will get with a paid host and you will also be given less bandwidth. You probably won't be allowed your own domain name (yourdomain.com) and you won't have your own email account (yourchoices@yourdomain.com). Probably most importantly is that with free hosting you will get little or no support from your host. With a paid host, you should expect your support emails answered within a few hours of sending them. When you have a free host you won't get much in the way of support. Furthermore, with a free host you can not be guaranteed your site won't go down. Okay, no host will guarantee that your site will not go down (be unavailable to surfers) but paid hosts will offer guaranteed minimal downtime. Why is downtime so important? Well, if your site is down no-one can see it and your regular visitors might think you've taken your site down and never come back. Bare in mind also that even if your site is only down for a short while you can lose your search engine position. Not only that but because of this some webmasters are reluctant to link to your site. Why? Because people will link to you in return for a reciprocal link, if your site is going to keep going down then your link to them is worth a lot less to them than their link to you. Then there is the issue of advertisements. Free hosts don't require you to pay money but they're not a charity. On each hosted site they put their own adverts. Whenever one of your visitors clicks on a advertisement, the free host makes money. These ads can be relatively discreet or quite obtrusive depending on the host. The worst can stick ads over the text of your site meaning visitors have to collapse them just to read the text. Most people won't put up with this for too long. However most hosts are quite discreet. Don't be mislead by these disadvantages though. Although you get limited webspace and bandwidth, your site is unlikely to need much since it's unlikely you'll need to host many large images or videos. Also don't get overly concerned about downtime when you are first starting out. A free host is an excellent way of learning what you're particular hosting needs will be. One last thing to think about. Many webmasters consider people who use free hosts to be less committed to their sites than those who pay, afterall you are unwilling to pay for it. All sites built for profit that use free hosts are often seen as dodgy. This is because you don't need to hand over credit card details etc. to get hosted. Which means that dodgy-dealers can duck and dive without leaving too much of a trace. It's also suspicious that someone would risk the security of their site on a free host. However, non-profit sites should not fall under such suspicions. Furthermore, many academic or non-profit sites use free hosts and have little or no problems with them. Free hosts can be the ideal hosting solution for philosophy websites. They have their drawbacks but many feel the advantages outweigh the disadvantages a few times over. Free hosts are probably the best first host for new webmasters and for many, the only host they'll ever need. |
