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The major advantage of using a free server for your webpages is obvious: You don't need to pay for it.
There may however be one or two other benefits.
If you have access to a webdomain that you use for professional business, and want to add a page with some of your private interests - without making a connection to the business website, you can put it on a free server.
Most free webspace providers offer tools for setting up webpages with little or no understanding of HTML.
This may allow you to produce a website without having to bother about HTML.
The less attractive part of the story is that in most cases a free website can't take up as much space as you might like. Furthermore, free webspace means slower loading times than most other websites.
Another disadvantage is that if you happen to make a success.... a page with thousands of visitors, and you want to move the page to another (faster) server, you will have to change the address of the page when you move from the free server.
So in general, if you expect to move a page once it's become popular, do not use the free space until then. Get your own domain name on a paid server right away. It will solve many problems for you in the future.
But then again, many websites aren't intended to grow into a new "Yahoo", so why pay for the server space when you can get it for free.
Similarities and differences
Most providers of free webspace require that you add certain information on your pages (e.g. "provided by Geocities").
It is also common that you need to allow a second window to open when users request one of your pages. This second window typically contains information about the provider of the free space.
Since the providers of free webspace vary these things quite often, you will need to go to the provider's page, to see how things work at the moment.
We have picked some of the more popular providers of free webspace in the list below. There are others, and I am sure there will be even more in the future.
The purpose of this list, however, is not to make a complete listing of all providers of free webspace.
The aim has been to provide a list of providers that offer free webspace under conditions that should be acceptable to most users.
You should try loading a few pages from each of the listed providers in order to get an impression of the loading times and overall impression of each provider.
Remember it's not always the site that provides the most space that offers the best solution for you.
Download times are generally a bigger concern than the amount of space you get. However, since its hard to measure, one can easily be tempted to judge on the amount of space. Don't!
Continue on for links to the more popular free sites...
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