web hosting

[pettah]

hi...can anyone tell me what the differece is between web hosting and building your own web site...which is better...and is geocities.com a good place to build a web page...?

[EvilRick]

When you use a web host, you pay somebody else to store all the files for your site and they give you a certain amount of bandwidth a month. You can find some really low priced ones nowadays.

Hosting your own web site is pretty easy, but bandwidth is usually a problem when you run it from you house. Your upload speed is usually only ~256Kb's. Just go w/ a web host, they're so cheap these days.

I would NOT use Geocities to host a site. Use something like GoDaddy.com or look on WebHostingTalk you'll find lots of info there on the subject.

[pettah]

why is geocities a bad place to host a website?

[aldtech]

I’m not sure why EvilRick suggests not using Geocities but if they are anything like Lycos or MSN or AhOL or any other major ISP then the site you create is not really yours and is subject to shutting down at the whim of the provider.

You should register your own domain name and then pay a web host site to host it. They will provide you with space (megabytes) to place your site but you have to create the contents. That is the fun part.

Have fun.

AL

[ShawnD1]

If you are thinking about making a free website, I would recommend either angelfire or tripod. They won't shut you down as long as you don't try hosting zip, exe, or rar files on the server.
Each of them has popups with the site, but who doesn't have a popup blocker these days?