free web hosting service

free web hosting

A free web hosting service is a web hosting service that is free, usually advertisement-supported. Free web hosts will usually provide a subdomain (yoursite.example.com) or a directory (www.example.com/~yourname). In contrast, paid web hosts will usually provide a second-level domain along with the hosting (www.yourname.com). Many free hosts do allow use of separately-purchased domains. Rarely, a free host may also operate as a domain name registrar.
The majority of the hosting companies use free hosting to introduce their services, and as an entry point to their more expensive offerings. Generally they recoup their costs in one of a few ways:

    * Advertising - Selling online advertising on the customer sites is generally considered a fair trade - the reasoning is that high traffic sites are more expensive to host, but the additional traffic allows for additional ad impressions therefore covering the cost. For the web master, it can be a good trade if the advertising is of good quality and non-competitive. This is one of the main reasons that businesses do not use free hosting for their website. The majority of free hosting companies use this method.

    * Referrals - Using a simple form of viral marketing, these providers rely on the users to spread the offer. The ratio of free to paid accounts is known, and by having each free user refer a number of friends, the hosting provider is able to get enough paid accounts to cover the cost.

    * Resell Hosting - This is where someone starts up a hosting company, attracts lots of visitors, then sells the hosting company to someone else once it can no longer support itself. Once sold, this individual uses the money to start up multiple hosting ventures and sells each in turn.

Some hosting companies are using hybrid approaches that mix these tactics.

hosting images

 

hosting image

An image hosting service allows individuals to upload images to an Internet website. The image host will then store the image onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image.
Typically image hosting websites provide an upload interface; a form in which you specify the location of an image file on your local computer file system (using a browse button). After pressing a “Submit” button the file is uploaded to the image host’s server. Some image hosts allow you to specify multiple files at once, in this form, or the ability to upload one ZIP file containing multiple images. Additionally, some hosts allow FTP access, where single or multiple files can be uploaded in one session using FTP software or an FTP-capable browser.

After this process, your image is hosted on their server. Typically this means it is available on the web (to the public). You may also be allowed to make inline links to the hosted image, to embed it on other websites e.g.

    * Linking with HTML code
    * Linking with BBcode
    * A clickable thumbnail that is linked to the full image

Usually, the image host will put restrictions on the maximum image size allowed, or the maximum space or bandwidth allowed per user. Due to bandwidth costs, free services usually offer relatively modest size limits per image when compared to paid services, but allow users hotlinking their images.

differtiation of hosting

 types of hosting

Internet hosting services can run Web servers; see Internet hosting services.

Hosting services limited to the Web:

Many large companies who are not internet service providers also need a computer permanently connected to the web so they can send email, files, etc. to other sites. They may also use the computer as a website host so they can provide details of their goods and services to anyone interested. Additionally these people may decide to place online orders.

    * Free web hosting service: offered by different companies with limited services, sometimes supported by advertisements, and often limited when compared to paid hosting.
    * Shared web hosting service: one's website is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. The features available with this type of service can be quite extensive. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.
    * Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a collocated server. Many resellers provide a nearly identical service to their provider's shared hosting plan and provide the technical support themselves.
    * Virtual Dedicated Server: also known as a Virtual Private Server (VPS), divides server resources into virtual servers, where resources can be allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. VPS will often be allocated resources based on a one server to many VPSs relationship, however virtualisation may be done for a number of reasons, including the ability to move a VPS container between servers. The users may have root access to their own virtual space. Customers are sometimes responsible for patching and maintaining the server.
    * Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. Another type of Dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.
    * Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.
    * Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.
    * Cloud Hosting: is a new type of hosting platform that allows customers powerful, scalable and reliable hosting based on clustered load-balanced servers and utility billing. Removing single-point of failures and allowing customers to pay for only what they use versus what they could use.
    * Clustered hosting: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization. Clustered Servers are a perfect solution for high-availability dedicated hosting, or creating a scalable web hosting solution. A cluster may separate web serving from database hosting capability.
    * Grid hosting: this form of distributed hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes.
    * Home server: usually a single machine placed in a private residence can be used to host one or more web sites from a usually consumer-grade broadband connection. These can be purpose-built machines or more commonly old PCs. Some ISPs actively attempt to block home servers by disallowing incoming requests to TCP port 80 of the user's connection and by refusing to provide static IP addresses. A common way to attain a reliable DNS hostname is by creating an account with a dynamic DNS service. A dynamic DNS service will automatically change the IP address that a URL points to when the IP address changes.

  Some specific types of hosting provided by web host service providers:

    * File hosting service: hosts files, not web pages
    * Image hosting service
    * Video hosting service
    * Blog hosting service
    * One-click hosting
    * Pastebin Hosts text snippets
    * Shopping cart software
    * E-mail hosting service