Freehoster
Freehosters are providers of free web space on which the user can offer their own website ( see also: web hosting ). Users can edit the source code of their own pages or create them entirely themselves and upload their own files. The user usually only receives a subdomain ( e.g. user.freehoster.de ) or a subdirectory ( e.g. www.freehoster.de/user ).
In order to finance the offer or make it profitable, most freehosters display advertising in the form of pop-ups or layers on the user pages. Older hosters often insert banners or use frames as an advertising form.
Standard features
Most freehosters offer FTP access to upload files to the web space . In addition, some allow files to be uploaded via HTTP, this feature is usually called WebFTP.
Many providers support one or more scripting languages such as PHP . In addition, there is often the option of creating your own database with the freehoster. Mostly MySQL or PostgreSQL is supported here . With the support of scripting languages such as PHP, it is possible to create more complex websites based on dynamically generated pages or to use a content management system such as Joomla .
The traffic is in most free hosting for the fair-use principle unlimited. That means: As long as the traffic is not overloaded by mirror services or chats, there is no limit. Of course, there are also freehosters where traffic is normally limited. Often you will find a limitation of the file size with freehosters, often called file size limit. This limitation is usually intended to prevent large files from being offered for download and thus increasing traffic.
financing
Private projects of people who rent a server from a large provider or set it up in their own data center are usually financed by advertising income or smaller sponsors. Such projects are often discontinued after a while because they are not profitable. However, if the financing of the project is well organized and the service is popular, a freehoster can establish itself as well as a paid hoster. More users then mean more advertising and therefore more revenue. Some commercial web hosts also offer a heavily scaled-down hosting variant even on an ad-free basis free of charge. So they want to get their customers to switch to a paid offer with more features.
Performance & availability
Normally, freehosters are slower than so-called paid hosts, who charge money for the provision of the server. This is because there are usually more accounts on a server and the hardware is generally a little less powerful. Furthermore, the availability of freehosters is seldom guaranteed, whereby the uptime can vary greatly depending on the provider. The reasons for this are primarily economic, since the provider of the service only earns money through advertising on the user pages or through sponsors, and this is largely repaid by maintenance and operating costs. However, there can be exceptions where a free hosting service is faster or has better availability than a paid service.
safety
Another aspect that should not be neglected is the security of the individual offers, which to a large extent depends on how secure the server system used in the background is. This depends, for example, on whether the operator regularly updates the server software, its operating system and the other components used.
Another problem is that scripting languages usually offer extensive commands that can also be used to change the server configuration or to overload the server with complicated calculations. Because of this, most operators block many such commands, but the lack of commands can cause problems and make it necessary to change the application.
Web links
- List of freehosters (Retrieved December 22, 2016)
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.bplaced.net/?location=faq FAQ about the free web space from bplaced. Retrieved April 2, 2010
- ↑ http://www.lima-city.de/2008/help Help, rules and FAQ for the free and ad-free web space from lima-city. Retrieved January 27, 2011
- ↑ http://www.111mb.de/home,agb.php General terms and conditions of 111MB. Retrieved December 3, 2012
- ↑ Announcement about the shutdown of uttx.net . Retrieved May 9, 2010.