Free Web Hosting Accounts – Are They Right for Me?

Is a free web hosting account really your best option? And are they really free?

Aged Expired Domains – Are They Really Good Enough?

Determining the real commercial value of an aged domain is quite difficult and tedious. Domain traders make it a point to grab aged domains from auction houses just to taste their hidden powers and commercial advantages. However, experienced and seasoned domain traders always doubt about the commercial viability of such domains. According to domain name experts, considering the actual age of a given expired domain is a very small factor.

Expired domains that are really old, say 12 years, may provide you some undeniable advantages due to their ripe, old age; lot of people can identify its name because of the old acquaintance. Now the big question is why do domain name traders desire the issue of age so badly? Is there something that you and I do not know? One conventional bit of thought says that all good quality domains were registered first and in actuality, they should be too good to be neglected. This seems a valid argument and a sensible issue as far as the issue of age is concerned.

On the other hand, some domain name traders are too skeptical about old domains, just because they may have nothing to offer you, except that they have a past record of continuous and consistent renewal. An old domain may just be a simple domain with no established history of traffic and inbound links. Experts also suggest that an old domain may have belonged to two categories of owners- an established business or industry that will never let their domain slip out of their hands, or an old domain owned by small businesses or individuals, who might have lost their control over their domains due to some unknown reasons.

However, there is one single significant advantage associated with old domains, especially when they relate themselves with the leading searching engines. Google has a verifiable system of grading domain names according to their age; its massive and humongous search technological algorithms ensure that really old domains are placed at their relevant search engine rank positions. However, at what position such domains get their ranking is still uncertain and unsure.

Fixing the actual price for such domains are actually very difficult and you may decide it going by the current market trends, while buying one such domain. However, one thing to note here is that people are ready to pay a fair price for such domains, just to utilize them for developing meaningful web sites. If you wish to buy an old expired domain, ensure that you are checking its age; if the age is more than say 8 years, you can definitely go for it. Age factors can help you find out the quality of generics, as this is a better indicator of finding the value of an expired domain name. Most of the premium and better quality domain names sprout from an internet boom era of late 1990′s.

However, buying expired domains based on their perceived age could be a tricky issue and you may need to learn and understand how the age of a given domain expired can really help you in your domain trading business.

Free Web Hosts – Do They Really Live Up To The Hype?

For anyone who’s new to the world of websites, or indeed those on a tight budget, the concept of free web hosting always sounds appetizing. As you’re probably aware however, very little in this world is truly free. Often those offering something for free are seeking something else in return, even if it’s not your money. Consequently, is free hosting really all it’s cracked up to be?

Hosting (like most other services) costs money to provide. Although the services offered by free web hosts are often very basic compared to those that which you might buy, that web host would still soon be out of pocket if they couldn’t recuperate their costs via some means. This is precisely why most free web hosts display some kind of advertisements on any websites you have with them.

Although these advertisements can often (though not always) be “closed” or hidden after they’ve been displayed, they always look quite unsightly and as such can vastly degrade the browsing experience of your visitors, and even the credibility of the person running the website – you!

For that reason alone, anyone who is making a website for more than sheer enjoyment – especially those seeking to conduct business via their website – should dismiss any free web hosts who leave you with no choice but to display advertisements on their behalf. It’s probably a better idea to dismiss all free web hosts completely, in such instances. What you’d save by not paying for hosting would not be worth the amount of business or visitors you’d lose as a result.

The second big disadvantage of most free web hosting services is that they’re normally not rigged up to provide up-to-date technologies that most modern websites now utilize and require. Most websites are no longer merely static HTML pages built in point and click web design software – even those made by amateurs. Many are blog-based, or include community forums or the ability for visitors to leave feedback to be displayed on that website, amongst other things. All these things require that your web hosting service be capable of processing different scripting languages (such as PHP) in addition to having back-end database support, such as MySQL. This is all functionality that a great many of free web hosts simply cannot or will not offer to non-paying customers.

Customers of free web hosts are often not required to provide their full personal details. Couple that with the fact that no payment is required andit’s clear that the web host has no way to verify the validity of that customers information. As such they have no reassurance whatsoever that their customer doesn’t have unsavoury intentions – such as the intention to spam or host illegal material. This is precisely the reason most free web hosts deny customers the ability (or lack the support) to host any files beyond static HTML pages and a limited number of images.

Overall, there is little alternative but for anyone who is seeking to run a serious, functional website to shell out for some paid web hosting. Nowadays it’s so cheap as to be little to no burden on ones wallet.