If you have been considering a free web hosting service for your website needs, you may want to think twice and prepare yourself to deal with pop-ups, pop-unders, third-party banner advertisements and other annoying elements.  You also have to keep in mind that common features such as PHP programming, MySQL databases, CGI scripts and FTP access may not be available.

You can embark upon a mission to look for a quality free web hosting service with no advertisements and useful features, but you will likely return disappointed once your search has concluded.  While you can never really expect any guarantees when it comes to free hosting, knowing what to expect will better assure that you do not end up with a terrible service.

Understand How Free Hosting Works

There are more than enough free web hosting providers to go around.  Unfortunately, most of them force you to place advertisements on your site or only provide you with the free service for a limited time.  Some do set you up with a quality service in exchange for carrying banners while others leave you to run your site on slow and insufficient servers.  In some cases, these servers fail to respond at all, leaving you with a website that is essentially useless.  So, if the service is impractical, how do free hosting companies make enough money to survive?

More and more, we are seeing free web hosts keeping themselves afloat by persuading their customers to sign up for paid hosting plans.  If they can provide a good service, this actually turns out to be a fair deal.  Premium hosting services are very affordable these days so purchasing service with a company you trust could prove to be worth your while.   The major downside is that even when upgrading to a paid service, your package could still end up lacking features that are commonly found on the professional hosting market.  For example, you just might have to pay extra for items such as FrontPage extensions and FTP support.  So even when you purchase service from a free web host, you still have to make sure you are getting your money’s worth.

Secure Your Web Presence

Should you find yourself in a situation where you must rely on a free web hosting service because of financial restrictions, there are a few things you can do to protect your website and identity.  First, you can register yourself a domain name with a reputable company such as GoDaddy or Yahoo.  Domain names are pretty cheap these days and only cost about $10 to $12 per year.  Before registering the name, look out for domain features such as a control panel and URL forwarding.  This will provide you with the ability to redirect your domain and change the destination to where ever you prefer.  So if your free web host folds and goes out of business or things simply are not working out, you can point the name somewhere else and move your website right along with it.

Though often overshadowed by the market dominated Windows and Linux platform, Unix remains a widely used platform and a popular option for web hosting. This article will introduce you to seven features commonly found in Unix hosting plans. Though basic, these features are very important and should not be underestimated.

1.) POP3 Email Accounts – An example of a POP3 email account would be “yourname@yoursite.com“. Most hosting companies will provide you with a large number of email accounts to use for yourself or distribute to your employees.

2.) Webmail and SMTP – As soon as your website goes live, email will likely become your main source of communication. The tool you need to make this an easy process is a webmail program such as Horde or Squirrelmail. This process can be even faster when downloading your messages to email clients such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora. However, in order for this to work, you need a Unix hosting solution that supports messaging protocols such as IMAP and SMTP.

3.) Spam Filter – It doesn’t matter who you are, no email user is immune to spam messages. In this day and age of the internet, having a reliable spam filter is a must. These applications are installed on the web server where your site resides and typically offer features such as blacklisting, whitelisting and greylisting to mitigate spam. The more flexible filters will allow you to make configurations to tag spam and have it delivered straight to a quarantine folder to keep it from cluttering your inbox.

4.) FTP Accounts – FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a method that allows you to upload your files and maintain them on the server. A Unix host that supports this protocol usually provides the ability to create a certain number of FTP sub-accounts. This allows you to provide your clients and users with access to password-protected directories, which is very useful for sharing files in a more efficient and secure manner.

5.) Backup Utility – While most web hosts perform automated backups on a regular basis, you should never put the fate of your website in their hands. There are many ways to backup your website data, but the easiest way is with a utility specifically designed for this task. Most of today’s control panels come included with built-in utilities that allow you to easily backup your site in minutes.

6.) Web Stats – Analyzing your visitors and traffic can play a crucial role in the success of your site. Popular web stat software such as AwStats and Webalizer run on the back-end of the server and can provide you with detailed reports on your statistics. This can give you the knowledge to make the needed adjustments or additions that increase traffic and boost sales.

7.) PHP and MySQL – Similar to Linux, almost all Unix plans come with support for PHP server-side programming and the MySQL database server. These features are generally provided for no extra costs and can give you the power to create a dynamic, data-driven website.

Source: http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/08/06/seven-basic-ingredients-of-unix-hosting/