recommendations for a free web host

[Target]

looking for some advice and/or recommendations regarding free web hosting for a local sporting club

I've done some static pages before, but never had a need for anything like this and I really don't know where or what to look for (or look out for)

I envisage this will be a largely static site, with a members only section for results and the like, email support (for contacting the committee), and probably pretty low bandwidth

any and all advice greatly appreciated 

 

[eleman]

I use zoho for small scale free web hosting and e-mail needs. It's similar to google apps.

[Target]

I use zoho for small scale free web hosting and e-mail needs. It's similar to google apps.

-eleman (July 16, 2016, 02:58 AM)

so what exactly does zoho provide?  i had a look at their site, but it doesn't look like they actually do the hosting part

[eleman]

I use zoho for small scale free web hosting and e-mail needs. It's similar to google apps.

-eleman (July 16, 2016, 02:58 AM)

so what exactly does zoho provide?  i had a look at their site, but it doesn't look like they actually do the hosting part

-Target (July 16, 2016, 03:09 AM)

https://www.zoho.com/sites/

They have templates you can choose from, and you can then customize.

They also offer gmail-like mail services for the domain (as well as a whole gamut of other services).

https://www.zoho.com/mail/

[f0dder]

Personally I'd look for non-free but cheap. I simply don't trust "free".

A local sporting club might not have a big budget, but wouldn't something like $10/month be possible? That would probably get you pretty far - might even get real support and working backups.

[Tuxman]

Free web hosts suck. All of them.

[4wd]

Or if you want something a little more involved you can always get a cheap deal on a VPS and run your own web server, which is what I do for my own static sites.

Or possibly get some use out of that RasPi ;-)

[Target]

Personally I'd look for non-free but cheap. I simply don't trust "free".

A local sporting club might not have a big budget, but wouldn't something like $10/month be possible? That would probably get you pretty far - might even get real support and working backups.

-f0dder (July 16, 2016, 04:47 PM)

could be, but at the moment I don't even really know what I should be looking for.  The club <i>had</i> a site, but they let it lapse (through inattention), so they pretty much have no public face (and they really need to promote themselves a bit)

Or if you want something a little more involved you can always get a cheap deal on a VPS and run your own web server, which is what I do for my own static sites.

Or possibly get some use out of that RasPi ;-)

-4wd (July 16, 2016, 07:46 PM)

this is a good solution, but it needs to be transferrable, ie I can't guarantee that there will always be someone that can manage it (assuming I can )

Free web hosts suck. All of them.

-Tuxman (July 16, 2016, 06:35 PM)

really struggling to see the value here.  If you really want to contribute, tell me what you're experience is, with who, and why that wasn't good.  And while you're a it, some positive stories would be useful too (you must have some).  If you can do that then maybe I can learn something...

[michaelkenward]

What would the website hold?

Does it need to be a full-blown site or a blog that you can tweak to say what you want?

You can do quite a bit with something like WordPress:

https://wordpress.com/

And that costs nothing.

If you want to go paid, some will let you get started with a minimal site that costs nothing and then let you upgrade as you grow into it.

[wraith808]

What would the website hold?

Does it need to be a full-blown site or a blog that you can tweak to say what you want?

You can do quite a bit with something like WordPress:

https://wordpress.com/

And that costs nothing.

If you want to go paid, some will let you get started with a minimal site that costs nothing and then let you upgrade as you grow into it.

-michaelkenward (July 18, 2016, 04:53 AM)

+1 for wordpress.  And you can move to self-hosted later if you need to.

[Target]

What would the website hold?

You can do quite a bit with something like WordPress:

-michaelkenward (July 18, 2016, 04:53 AM)

good question...the old sites long gone and no backups (DOH!!) so I can't say what the content was, but I envision it being a handful of static pages (it could be one page, but that looks untidy for mixed content), and mostly text.

Will look into wordpress as a starting point, thanks!

[IainB]

Take a hunt around here: http://www.acme.com



The URL for that is: http://www.acme.com/...oftware/micro_httpd/
I wondered whether it was a genuine site, because it popped up unasked for, when I had a slow response to a 192.168.1.1 router admin page request, so I have no idea how it actually got there, onto my browser, but I took a look and it seemed like it could potentially be quite useful (no warning messages from Malwarebytes about it). Clever marketing to get it to "pop up" like that (though it wasn't a pop-up).
The domain address http://www.acme.com   says:

ACME Laboratories   
Graphics * Unix * Networks * Fun
Purveyors of fine freeware since 1972. On the net since 1991. ...
_______________________________

It's an interesting site, and includes references to secure and "lite" own-website hosting software.
I thought of using some of the software to replace the static website hosting I currently have on Google Drive. The latter service is to be killed off by Google around 29 July 2016, with the suggestion that one could replace it with what seems to be an incredibly techno-obfuscated and tortuous approach seemingly designed to make you NOT want to use it.

EDIT: 2016-07-22
Refer also Google Drive webhosting functionality to be shut down. (AOBTD)

[Deozaan]

I've used http://weebly.com/ in the past. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for a professional looking site, but it can handle a few static pages and a simple site.

[rjbull]

A few local artists, and my parish church, are using weebly, I presume because it makes it easy for people busy with other things to maintain simple sites.