I'm checking out free hosting providers for fun and personal websites. I wanted to know what to recommend to people who want to make their own website, so I decided to try things out for myself!
I'm uploading a version of this page. That link is to the version hosted on my own server. Does it look different from the others? The same? We'll find out!
My test website is very simple, just an index.html and css file, and is about 8kb total.
Tested
- shannonkay.yay.boo hosted by yay.boo - This was really fast and easy to use. I dragged the folder with my index.html and css files in it onto the uploader, chose a subdomain and typed in my email address. They sent me a "magic link" to manage the account. They offer free websites up to 10mb for free on the yay.boo subdomain, and there's a little ghost icon in the corner of the site. You can subscribe to support the site starting at $25/year to use your own domain names, upload sites up to 25mb, and remove the ghost mascot.
- shannonkay.neocities.org hosted by Neocities
- Signing up was pretty simple. Once signed in, I headed to the site dashboard. It had some placeholder files already there. If you don't already have a site made, you can edit the starter index.html and css file in their browser-based editor. I used drag and drop to upload the files from my test website folder, overwriting the default index page with my own file.
A free Neocities account gives you 1GB storage and 200GB bandwidth. The Supporter account for $5/month gets you 50GB storage and 3000GB, custom domain support, and some other things.
After updating my website, Neocities made a new thumbnail to add to their community gallery. I added a few tags on signing up for Neocities, including pink, coffee, and books. The next time I visited the Neocities main page, it showed me a bunch of other fun-looking pink websites to visit. - shannonkay.nekoweb.org hosted by Nekoweb
- Sign-up was easy. I signed in and went to the dashboard. There are some placeholder files, index and CSS, plus a couple of interesting other files like a custom cursor. I can edit the files that are already there with their browser-based editor. Nekoweb has a nice file manager and editor combined. The CSS file that's included actually contains examples of how to style custom elements for Nekoweb, so don't overwrite it. My CSS file is named something different, so it won't be a problem.
There's an upload button, to browse for files and upload them. It's not obvious if I can drag or drop to upload or not, so I tried. It uploaded my CSS file, but didn't overwrite the default index file. I used the upload button to select my index file, and that worked to upload it and overwrite the default one.
Nekoweb has a 500MB storage limit for free accounts. Become a patron(starting at $3/month) to add custom domains, get 10GB max storage, access to FTP and git, and some other things.
Make Your Own Website - A beginner's guide to making a hand-crafted personal or hobby website with HTML and CSS.
Have Your Own Website - Why you should have a website, and ideas for types of websites you could make.
Helpful guides at Pixel Shannon
Check out my personal website, ShannonKay.com, it's my Classic Homepage.
Go to my Follow Page to learn where else to find me on the web.