There are many companies that do offer free hosting plans, but even though you may not be paying for it, the free web space will come as a cost.

Let me say there are certain times when you may want to use a free hosting provider.

• Keep in touch with family and friends for an up-and-coming special occasion
• Working on a school project

The above are not the only reasons why you may want to have a free host but if you building a website for profit or have a local small business and want to have a web presence, then you should not be using a free web host.

Why Not Use Free Hosting?

If you are looking to make money online with a web site, using a free hosting company does not look very professional. If you can’t take your business seriously, then I don’t believe your visitors will.

Many times when you have an account with a free hosting provider, you do not have your own domain name. Your URL may look something like this,

www.thebigfreesite.yoursite.com

You are actually a subdomain and that does not look very professional.

If you are using the free space because you have a local small business, using a sub-domain can be harmful to your business reputation.

Most business owners will use their small business name as their domain name to make it easier for people to find them on the Internet.

If you can’t afford to spend $5.00 a month to be seen online, then you need to review your budget for advertising as that is why many of the local small business are getting online. It is very cheap advertising. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to be put into a telephone book that many people don’t use anymore.

Hosting Space

The hosting space since it is free is very limited. Because of limited space, you may not have room for all the web pages you plan on creating.

This could create problems for you in the long run.

You can actually purchase a hosting account with unlimited bandwidth and diskspace for under $5.00 a month at Hostgator.

As you can see the cost of web hosting is very affordable.

Many hosting companies even have a free domain name for life when you purchase your hosting through them.

Ads on Hosting

To generate money, most of the free hosting services will put ads on your site. You, unfortunately, will not reap any of the profit.

Once your site is online, you will not be able to put any ads on it, as most of the providers do not want you taking away from their profits.

So maybe free web hosting is just what you need, but before you start creating a website with a provider, make sure you answer this question honestly.

If my free hosted web site disappeared tomorrow, would it really matter?

You need to answer that question honestly, as I have known people that have devoted a lot of time and created large sites using free hosting space, only to find one day it was gone.

They not only lost income from it, but all the time spent designing and building the site just how they wanted.

They had to start over.

This free web site hosting program is only offered to public schools K-12 located in the United States.

Being a teacher is very difficult work but very important and Lunarpages hosting company would like to be able to give back to communities.

This free web hosting plan can help schools and districts create websites to keep parents informed of homework assigned and class projects, help communication between parents and teachers, share information between districts or other classrooms within a school and much more.

If you are a district administrator, school principal, classroom teacher or PTA representative, contact Lunarpages.com web hosting and see how they can help you become visible on the web.

Lunarpages free hosting plan provides unlimited phone and email support, unlimited email addresses and FTP accounts, 500 MB storage, and 20 GB data transfer for each new account.

As long as this free hosting account is used for educational purposes, there is no restriction on the use of the hosting plan as long as it is opened by a public school official.

Unfortunately, at this time private schools, colleges, churches, non-profit organizations, day cares, and public schools outside the United States are NOT eligible to participate at this time.

By creating websites, using this program may help teach your students more than just how to surf the Internet.

With all the other information they are being taught in the classrooms, learning how to create, build and maintain a website could be a huge learning experience.

Lunarpages free web hosting for schools.

What Services Do I Need In A Web Hosting Plan?

• Money back guarantee
• No set-up fee
• Affordable cost
• Own e-mail (example: webmaster@yoursite.com)
• Excellent Customer Support
• No ads
• Private domain registration (optional)
• Toll Free Support
• Affordable domain renewal

Some web host companies will offer you great incentives to sign up with one of their plans but once you have signed up, they may have hidden fees.

So when you compare one web host to another make sure you are actually comparing the closest web hosting packages that you can.

Domain Name

Some of the web hosting providers will include a domain name included with their packages.

This may be a good option for many people.

The downside of this is that when you have a domain name included and you are not happy with your web hosting provider, you may not be able to “keep” your domain name if you transfer to another hosting company.

The reason is that your domain is included for only the time you stay with that hosting provider.

No Advertisements

If you are purchasing hosting, you should not have any of their advertisements on your web pages.

That is usually only for the free hosting companies as this is how they make some of their money.

This chart will help you compare affordable web hosting.

Best Web Hosting Companies

With so many companies vying for your business, how do you really know which company would be what you need?

That is a difficult question since everybody has certain wants and needs for their individual websites.

Long Term

Long Term condition was not stated above in the items to think about when you are comparing web hosting services.

How long do you plan on being with this company.

Are you looking to create a website and just keep building on it or do you want to create mini sites that you will be working on.

How Long Online?

I know you are making your website to be online for a long time, make sure the web hosting company will be able to grow with you.

Do research on how long the company has been in business by reading reviews and asking on forums that you participate in.

Your hosting package will be an on-going expense so take time to really take a look when you start to compare web hosting plans.

With so many different types of hosting companies on the Internet, it was difficult to see what the difference really was, so I put that chart together to help.

Beginners Beware

When I was first starting out online, I found (what I thought) was a good price for web hosting, what I found out later was that the hosting company I was using was a reseller for another company.

As I compared the hosting plans from the reseller to the actual hosting company, I realized how much they were jacking up the prices of the different products.

Don’t get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with making a profit reselling hosting, but many are raking newbies over the coals.

Save Your Money

When you are first starting out with creating your website or blog, you can find a basic hosting program for around $50 a year and many times with the domain registration included.

Basic plans usually have enough space to get up and running so don’t think you need to get the biggest package with all the bells and whistles starting out. This is especially true if you are going to use just a blogging software to create your web presence.

You can always upgrade to a bigger package later on down the road.

Is a basic plans really all I need?

Yes, it really is because the amount of space, e-mail address, sub-domains and many times the quick install of blogging software is included with these packages. Here is a comparison of affordable web hosting plans.

As you can see from the chart many of the plans do have basically the same services. I have used a few of the big names in this business that have excellent customer service.

Sure, every company will have complaints. I have see on the Internet many complaints about GoDaddy.

Even after seeing the different complaints, I decided to give them a try.

I couldn’t be happier with them.

With a few domains at another company, I moved them over to GoDaddy, then signed up with their basic hosting package because of the quick install of Wordpress. Yes, this blog is hosted with them.

I did have a few problems at the beginning, but once I contacted customer service they helped me work them out.

Long-Term Contract

Even if you don’t want to lock yourself into a long term hosting plan, it does save you money since many times you can get better rates buying web hosting for 12, 24 or 36 months.

Remember, blogging and/or creating a site (usually) is a business venture for you. You are looking to make money.

If you only sign up for a one month plan then by the time you actually start getting your feet wet, it is time to pay for hosting again. Who wants to have to remember to pay monthly?

Monthly payments may work for you while you are just starting out. But once you are able it is best to to with a 12 month plan (or even longer) because the time creating, building and designing your site will go extremely fast and before you know it your 12 month time is up.

So while you are looking at the different hosting, do take a look at the long term hosting plans. Many times you can get a great deal.

Think you have to small of a budget and need cheap (but great service) hosting plans, take a look at this chart that compares affordable web hosting that can fit into any budget.

GoDaddy

With multi level hosting plans and able to register a domain name for a very cheap price, this hosting company does have a website builder plan that can be purchased with 5, 10 or unlimited number of pages but it only includes web hosting.

Additional Charges for:

1. Your domain name

2. Getting your web site listed with the major search engines

3. Your traffic stats

4. Keyword Research Tool

They do have tutorials to help you build your website, but information is lacking on how to generate traffic to your new site and help with search engine optimization, which are the two biggest obstacles that beginners face when just starting out and have no idea how to create a website that works.

Site Build It

This product is for most people who want to build a website, but don’t have the technical knowledge or are not really into learning it.

SBI is truly an all-in-one website builder package.

When you purchase SBI, you are purchasing not just web hosting but ALL help you need to help you create your own website from help with finding a website niche idea to make sure your each page is search engine optimized.

Site Build It Price Includes:

1. Web Hosting

2. Domain name

3. Traffic Stats

4. Step by step action guide

5. Blog script

6. A forum full of uses from beginner’s to experienced to help with ANY problems you may have.

7. Keyword and Market research tool (Brainstorm It!)

GoDaddy and SBI difference in a nutshell

GoDaddy’s main purpose is web hosting and domain registration. Nothing more. They do not teach you how to build a website that is search engine optimized nor help you with generating traffic to your site.

Site Build It teaches you from start to finish all the steps you need to build a successful website with a money back guarantee if you decide their site builder is not for you.

Here is a chart that compares Site Build It to other web hosting providers.

I checked into the domain mapping for this blog when it was at uponmainstreet.wordpress.com, but found out that I would still be very limited on what I could do with it. I would still have all the limitation that wordpress.com has for their blogs.

Wordpress.com does not let you use ANY type of advertising on your site. It is a free service, so why should the owners of it let you get paid for blogging?

If you want to use wordpress for Google Adsense or any other type of money making opportunity online, you MUST use Wordpress.org for your blogging software platform.

Sure you have to pay for web hosting and a domain name, but you can get a basic plan and the domain name for around US$50. a year. That is pretty cheap considering all the stuff you can do with a blog.

I went to Godaddy.com for my hosting plan and just got the basic plan. Which runs less than $4 a month (cheaper is you purchase the 12, 24 or 36 month plan). Also when you purchase their hosting plan you can register a domain name for $1.99 (that is the cheapest price I found to register a domain name) GoDaddy.com Hosting Plans

Yes, having the free blogging software is great to keep family, friends or just for fun purposes, but if you want more from your blogging paying less than $4 a month can’t be beat!

1. Manage Tab

2. You will see under it Posts, pages, etc.. Click on the Export tab.

3. Export tab: will let you export (almost) everything to your computer. It does not save your blogrolls, but does save your posts, categories, comments, and custom field. Click on Download Export File. A box will pop up and you want to click the box for Save to Disk. This then will save to your computer. Remember to which area that you have saved it. If you can’t find it on your computer. Open the search box (on your task bar Start>search>files or folders and put the name of the file – usually called http://yourdomainname.wordpress.com)

4. Open your new wordpress blog at your hosting company.

5. Go to Manage Tab (again) Click on Import tab

6. Import Tab: They will have a list of different types of programs. Go to Wordpress link and click on it. Now use the browse button to find the wordpress.com information you exported above to your computer. Click on Upload file and import.

7. All of your posts, comments and all are now in your new blog. Make sure you keep the old blog at wordpress.com and add a post on there to let people know you have moved to a new “place”.

Many of the web hosting plans have the ability to add the wordpress (or other blogging software) to your new domain. If at all possible use the one click installation of the blog to help with your move, it is much easier to do.

Enjoy your new location and control over your blogging!

a. Under the area of My Products (or something to that effect), click on your hosting accounts.

b. This will take you to another page that shows your domain name and if your hosting plan is ready, you can click on Open and it will take you to your hosting panel.

c. Your control panel. If you did use Godaddy for your hosting plan, then click on the link that is located in the upper right corner that says “Go Daddy Hosting Connection”. If you have another web hosting company, look for something that may say “Fantastico De Luxe”. Here is the place where you can install your wordpress to your domain.

d. Places to put the blog: There are a few different ways to add a wordpress blog. This will give you an example of the different ways:

On the domain: www.yourdomainname.com

As a sub-domain: www.yourdomainname.com/blog

As an addon domain: www.blog.yourdomainname.com

I have mine set up on the domain since this is the only thing that I will use it for. Some people say that an addon domain is better if you are going to have a website.

On the domain: Just click the install and it will ask you which domain, click on that and for the “Install in directory” leave this blank. The admin access data will be your user name and password, Then go through all the rest of the steps. My wordpress blog was set up within an hour or so and I received an e-mail for when it was ready.

As a sub-domain: If you want to have it like that, you need to put in the “Install in directory” the name you want example: blog, my blog etc… This will then create the directory for it. You do not need to create it.

As an Addon Domain: You need to first set up the addon domain before you can install wordpress. In your control panel, create an addon domain, Whatever you name this it will be where you put your blog. So if you call the addon domain blog then the above will be the URL for it (blog.yourdomainname.com). It may take a any where from 30 minutes to a few hours for the system to set this up.

Once you have the wordpress installed on your domain. You will get an email with the login information (or you may have to use the one you created when you installed it).

Part 3 – will explain how to easily move your blog contents from wordpress.com to your new blog at your web hosting service.

The free blog was uponmainstreet.wordpress.com

The paid hosting blog is uponmainstreet.com

I didn’t have a lot of posts at the wordpress blog but enough that I did not want to lose them. If you are going to move to paid hosting, see if the hosting plan has one click install for a wordpress blog. This makes your move extremely easy to do and will explain in Part 2.

1. Find a hosting company. I used godaddy.com (see GoDaddy.com Hosting Plans)
for my hosted blog as I found they were the cheapest hosting company. The blog does not take up a lot of room so I just started with the Economy Plan. It is $3.99 for 2 months or if you want a 12 month plan it is $3.79. I purchased the plan for 36 months and it was only $3.39 a month. The reason I purchased so long was: 1. the discount. 2. If I decide in a year to move to another hosting company, I will be refunded for the time that I have not used. As time goes by, if I need more space I can upgrade but the Economy plan has plenty of available space!

2. Register your domain. I already owned my domain, but if you purchase the hosting plan through godaddy, your domain purchase will only be US$1.99 at the time you buy the hosting plan. This is so much cheaper than any other place I have found. I have seen other companies that a domain name purchase is up to $15.

3. Wait for setup. Once you have purchased your hosting and domain name (from whomever you decide). You have to wait for the hosting company to set up your host plan. This can take anywhere from a few hours to 48 hours. My hosting was set up within about 2 hours and I was ready to rock and roll!

4. Once setup is complete. If you have never had paid hosting take a look around in your admin area and look at all the different information that is available for you.

Go to step 2 to see how you will be moving your information from your wordpress.com blog to your paid hosting account.