Well you want to put yourself on web and if you just want your name out there with pictues, favourite links and mailto link so anyone can send you email. Then I think ’’Geocities’’ is the place to put your first flag. Well there are many free hosting services but geocities is still favourite of many because of it’s simplicity. we’ll discuss other Alternative Hosting Communities later.
Geocities Services:-
Registration is simple No special form needed if you have yahoo mail account then you are ready to use geocities, just type username and password and hit enter button.Geocities offer Free homepages for about 15 MB of web space as on Date:19/05/02 ( Check the webspace size for current date) with Browser FTP as well as other FTP features. With Geocities you’ll get excellent file manager with features like to oraginizing files within the account. File manager Support Many file formats that includes latest flash, mp3, midi, mht etc.
If you are new to Home page making then just try page editor tool in the right hand side of the file manager. Or if you Know HTML then start making page by edit HTML feature in file manager. Geocities also have Page wizard feature which is having so many ready made templates, you just have to enter your information into it.
Yahoo Geocities also offer to downlaod Yahoo sitebuilder which is quite handy tool for building website from your desktop and publishing it directly to your geocities account. This sitebuilder is excellent tool for beginners to create webpage and to learn that other WYSIWYG type editors works same. You can add news ticker or weather search on your feature which is free service from yahoo. Also you can add messanger online/offline status indicator feature on your page so that visitor can see if you are online on your yahoo messenger. You can even add guestbook to your website so that users can sign it every time they visit your webpage. Page counter is also available for free from Yahoo which is good idea to know how many page hits you get on your site or its individual pages.
Misc features:-
You can list yourself on Yahoo Geocities member’s directory if you created a community based website or You dedicated a page to some city, person, artist’s fan page or even if you are putting some informative content like tutorials or some other valuable stuff then you can list yourself into it. Link exchange service by yahoo is excellent. You can also list your webpage into ( https://webring.org ) links. Monthly bandwidth for hosted sites is 3GB per month, which is too much for beginners who just want to put themselves on the net. I read on the many message board of technical support that Yahoo’s paid hosting serice is excellent and have a better customer support than brienkster.
Notice Probs?
Yes many of them are as follows...
Yahoo mail or some of it’s service goes down at that time they shutdown the Geocities FTP feature for next 24 hours. Also FTP features is closed in many coutries. Browser FTP is having file size limit of 5 mb for each file.
Banner ads is dispalyed on top of your page (Sometimes left or right) and also a pop up ad when user first acces your webpage. Well this is irritating but they need this to keep service free.
They cut down on many free seriveces offered by them in past as they started paid hosting for small buisness and freelancer in cheap rates. They also stopped the adservice in which users get paid if someone purchase from thier site’s banner ad or text link. Spammers collects email address from geocities homepages so watch out while signing guestbooks. Geocities never took action against the content hosted on geocities as many users violated geocities by putting some Porn content & Hacking/cracking stuff on it. Even if you send them E-mail about this they will not take action on user’s account. Well as every Coin Have TWO sides so Yahoo Geocities also got no exception. But we are getting free Hosting and faster bandwidth every month for our account, what more we need?
So what to do on Geocities:-
If you want to create your own webpage then this service is excellent and as many pagecounter, Intercative Scripts, guestbook service provider are out on the net. Take help of these sites and build your page. And if you’re creating some informative website that is going to help the internet surfers in any way, then use some Nice free HTML editor to build it fast.e.g.DHE Editor @ https://hexagora.com/en_details_dhe.asp (Features a nice editor)
Well there is also one good editor works with Yahoo geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, Freeservers etc. Just point your browser to https://netjane.com (Check this link as I never visited this link since jan 2002). I really like webmasters those who put their best on the pages and make internet a good place for information. Do email me if anyone from here is having such informative website on any free hhosting serice.
I would love to hear from you.
Well comparing with Lycos.com’s Tripod & Angelfire hosting service Yahoo is less on pop up ads and Better on Access speed.
Well as usual I also found alternatives. For yahoo’s geocities.com alternatives are some sites which are free but with some restriction so just check entire website to learn if this is the one you are looking for.
1) https://ionichost.com or coolfreepages.com Hosts your web pages upto 20MB limit and puts small exit pop up ad on the page which your site vistor sees when they leave your site. Nice Web hosting Serice.
2) https://1and1.com hosts for free for 1year or so for United states and Canadian Residents. They also offer free doamin name for given free period after that period users have to pay cheap payment for hosting as well as for domains.
3) https://brienkster.com offers free asp based hosting for users. (Restrictions are there so check it if u want) I Can’t gurrantee it’s service as they delete the member accounts periodically to clean up some space on thier disk and to gain the speed.
4) https://freewebs.com offers 100mb space, text link at bottom and file size limit of 256KB for upload & 500MB monthly transfer. Well excellent site for users with large content based webpages.
Well those are enough links to get started. Check https://freewebspace.net Or https://free-webhsot.com to know more better free web hosts than these.
well Geocities.com is excellent site for free hosting (With limitations Of course) as you site can be searched with the search engine provided by the geocities at the member directory.
Check it out If you are happy with the features explained above.
At last it is worth to host your page on Geocities.com.