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Do you need a free web page? (not unlike this one, though better, I'm sure)
Hey, need a quick web site for FREE. Ok, think not. Me either, generally,
but, there are times...
For instance, I started writing this little column on a small newspaper that had
lots of large web links (annoying to type in) and thought it would be great to
have a site online where the column could be read with clickable links so folks
wouldn't have to do all that typing. Or, recently I was interested in showing a
prospective client a graphic design proposal (I have a small design firm and
local sign shop) and I knew that they were getting bombarded with ideas that,
given the often memory, and therefore bandwidth, hungry nature of a lot of
graphics, I had little way to get thru to them. Unless, I set up a small page
where I could drop a less intrusive .jpg file and just send the client an
address. I sure didn't want to spend money setting up a domain and space, etc.
on that, just as I didn't need to lay out a lot of money on a web page for the
newspaper site as I didn't know whether or not anybody would be very interested
in (it may suck, jury's still out on that). Get the picture?
Ok, problem: Need quick, preferably free web presence.
Solution: There are still a bunch of places to set up free web sites, some
better than others. There used to be a lot more, but quite a few have dried up
over the years as they've found they couldn't turn a profit on just banner ads
alone. Still, there are several that I've used for various projects at one time
or another. My favorite used to be Geocities
(http://www.geocities.com) and let me
tell you why. While they have relatively large domain names like our old parent
address
http://www.geocities.com/nethotspots (I'll address shorter URL addys in a
moment), their interface with you is pretty easy to work with. They offer a File
Manager page which is very user friendly, and, this is the part I liked most,
your page is up the minute your upload is complete. The down side? I recently
switched to Microsoft FrontPage '02 which uploads directly to your site by ftp
(it can be done manually, but it's a pain), while Geocities recently cut out all
ftp uploads on their free and Plus clients. Bummer. I got a recent e-mail from
them explaining that they are spending this weekend working on their system, as
well as moving it, and I know there have been a lot of defections and complaints
about this and some other things lately, so I'm waiting to see how things shake
out in the coming weeks. If you are making a simple one or two page web site, or
you are comfortable with web development in general, give them a week or two
(this is May 3rd, '02), and give it a go. I think you'll find it pretty easy to
navigate, and you can usually find help on their board. By the way, don't bother
with their help chat line as it appears to be full of snot nosed little geeks
who have little better to do with their time than to curse anyone who would dare
ask a question and Geocities/Yahoo does not monitor their channels very well as
evidenced in recent week by events regarding a certain webring that turned up in
the news.
So, new problem, in my case, find a server who would allow me to ftp upload
using FrontPage.
Solution: Angelfire (www.angelfire.com).
The name is still as long, but they do allow ftp uploading with FrontPage (you
have to go thru a couple of pages to turn that feature on) and it works great,
hence
www.angelfire.com/tn3/nethotspots, which, for those of you who hadn't
noticed, is the now the current parent URL address of this site.
Now, to address the long name situation, there are free services out there
where you can obtain what's called a 'Redirect' which, simply put, allows you to
have a shorter, easier to remember address (http://surf.to/nethotspots).
When you type in the surf.to... URL, then the service 'redirects' you to the
longer named site. The one this site uses is V3 (www.v3.com). In this case, and
not unusually, it also offers a banner ad program, wherein you can upload your
banner to them and, in turn, they will show your banner on other's free sites
where ever they may show up, which
adds even more traffic to your site.
Finally, I always add a small 'tracker' or counter to the bottom of the page,
again thru a free service, and there are several out there, that will keep up
with, depending on the service, how many hits you get as well as several other
things sometimes like where they found your site to what operating system they
were
using. Neat, huh.
Now I want to mention a minor cautionary note, as I will elaborate more on in
another article being written as we speak. It is simply this, never, no wait a
minute, NEVER!!! use your main e-mail address, or, frankly, your real name,
unless you just need to, to sign up for ANY services, free or otherwise. What
happens is those
services offset their costs by selling your personal info, i.e.: your e-mail, to
literally millions of people and companies all over the world. In case I haven't
mentioned it yet, you may have noticed that the e-mail address I use for this
article and site is also FREE. You can get one at hundreds of places; I use
Hotmail generally (www.hotmail.com). And, I
might add, since starting this article and site, I have received gobs of stupid,
useless, often offensive, e-mail through hotmail that I delete regularly (the
porn people must love me). All that 'spam' would have been sent to my main
address, had I not 'filtered' it through Hotmail. So, only give out your real
e-mail to folks who are local, not business' unless necessary, and, of course,
family and friends and you can save yourself a bunch of grief later.
If you have any problems, drop me a note and I'll be glad to help if I can.
Oh, and I can build you a banner ad (all things are possible with profit) if you
don't want to learn that skill, though there are several easy programs one can
use to do it, and, at the aforementioned V3 site, where you sign in for the
banner program, they have easy to use, if simple, banners you can customize,
text with generic color graphics, I believe.
Take care.
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