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Saturday, June 2, 2007

Web Site Update

"I think getting your own website would be awesome! I am all for unconfined Morgan greatness." -Anonymous

I've begun making considerations for potentially creating a web site. When I first got the idea long ago, I thought about potentially starting on GeoCities, but there are plenty of sites that are in many ways better. After checking free-webhosts.com and several free hosting sites, I've decided that if I'm going to start a web site, I've narrowed it down to four options, which each have pluses and minuses:

FreeHostia
The Good: 250 MB of space, 5 GB of bandwidth, scripting support, superfast web servers.
The Bad: Only "basic" editor with FrontPage being the main alternative supported; 500 KB filesize limit; some scripts are outdated; blocks IP addresses outside the United States every so often due to DDoS attacks; I don't like "morganwick.freehostia.com" as a web address.

50Webs
The Good: Unlimited bandwidth; "advanced" and WYSWYG editors; VERY rave reviews.
The Bad: Only 60 MB of space; no scripting or SQL support on free plan; 500 KB filesize limit except for zipped files (limit there is 8 MB); no site stats.

AwardSpace
The Good: 200 MB of space, 5 GB of bandwidth, scripting support.
The Bad: Very similar to FreeHostia, which I had better than AwardSpace for sure at one point; "basic" editor only; 500 KB filesize limit; has a bad reputation for censoring web pages with words on their banned list; some PHP functions do not work; blocks IP addresses due to DDoS attacks (and I'm not as certain the US isn't included).

ZendURL
The Good: 500 MB of space makes FreeHostia and AwardSpace look like 50Webs; 15 GB of bandwidth; "advanced" and WYSIWYG editors; scripting support; further upgrades typically work on a points system, no directly paying extra; no known filesize restriction, possibly as high as 20 MB if it does exist; they're still working on it, so the kinks will eventually go away.
The Bad: Confusion on whether subdomains (morganwick.zendurl.com) are really allowed; restricts or blocks many add-ons (important because any web site would have to become the new home of Da Blog); buggy and restrictive FTP; they're still working on it, so there are bugs; they're still working on it, so the stuff that makes it really good might get toned down as it grows/ages.

You can learn more by clicking the links above, or by going to the free-webhosts review pages for FreeHostia, 50Webs, AwardSpace, and ZendURL. I will have a poll going for the next week, but it'll be non-binding; you could choose ZendURL and I might end up going with FreeHostia.

I'll also be returning to a much older post on Da Blog. Any new web site will likely contain things that wouldn't be entirely appropriate for Da Blog. Earlier I asked what, of a list of potential projects, you would want me to feature on Da Blog. That list will now return in poll form and will potentially direct the future course of any web site, or of Da Blog. You can, of course, propose alternatives by commenting on this post.

The two questions will appear randomly on the right side; you'll either see one or the other, chosen at random. This is because Bravenet does not allow me to have multiple poll questions showing at once without going for a more robust but more complicated service which would be most useful if I... had a full-fledged web site.