Slide 17 of 24

Your domain or website must be hosted in order to be available for others to see on the Internet. Paid domain hosting usually costs $20-$300/month, although it can be found as low as $5/month. This site is hosted by nomonthlyfees.com, which charges you a one-time fee of $200 (free domain registration included) and then only $35 annually (to cover the cost of domain registration). There are a few domain hosts that will host your site for free, but, in exchange, they place a banner ad on every page of your site. One free host (Portland Communications) will host your domain for free without banner ads, but restricts the volume of page transfers (traffic) from your site (100 MB/month). Such a host is adequate for low traffic sites (my cub scout pack is hosted there - pack414.org), but not for an even moderately busy site.

Click here for lifetime webhosting

An alternate to domain hosting is domain forwarding. In this case, when people click or type in your domain name, they are forwarded to your site, which is hosted on another server (usually your ISP or free web space). There are a few web hosts (such as crosswinds.net) that allow unlimited web space without ads. Some registrars, such as discountdomainregistry.com include domain forwarding as part of the domain registration package. Others (such as namesecure.com) charge a moderate fee ($24.00/year).

Web hosting is a constantly changing process, with more freebies being offered on a regular basis. Check the lists of current hosts at www.freewebspace.net or www.freesitex.com/domain.html for the latest deals.