Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Free Web Hosting Question

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Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 06-03-2014, 02:50 PM:

My ISP going back to the early days of the internet has provided me free space to put up a web page without registering a domain name. I never had the need for a personal web page, but I use the space to park pictures that I post other forums that do not host images like Film-Tech.

Unfortunately, as the world has changed and most of us get our internet thru their phone company or cable tv provider (as do I), this ISP has decided to get into another line of business. Before the summer is over, they will be discontinuing consumer ISP services. I got email covered, but I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions of where I can park pictures that I want to display on internet forums, without any ads or content from the host?

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 06-03-2014, 05:12 PM:

Although we are using this for large audio files, the "Drop Box" is available with some substantial storage and the minimum amount is free.

Our local amateur theatre group use it for their set designs and that type of file.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 06-03-2014, 07:24 PM:

Mitchell, we use Dropbox, but just the other day one of the staff poo-pooed it and suggested we switch to Google Drive -- it's free like Dropbox, but they give you a sizable storage area -- 15GB as opposed to Dropbox's 2. Haven't used it yet, but will try it out.

The real issue with all these "free" services is, how incessant and how annoying will the ads and the requests for you to "upgrade" to their paid services be. It just depends on how much tugging at your wallet you are willing to put up with. Paying your way sometimes is worth the cost just to reduce the annoyance factor.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-03-2014, 08:31 PM:

I've used Dropbox and Google both. Neither have pestered me with e-mail ads, but Google incessantly calls my day job with some stupid recording wanting us to "promote our website." I have tried the "press 9 to be removed from our list" option but they (it) still keeps calling.

Dropbox hasn't bugged me at all, except the file gets close to full.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 06-03-2014, 10:18 PM:

You know you can set up a domain and just pay only for the domain registration without actual web hosting. Some of my domains used redirection.net while others were set up with GoDaddy which offers the same service with a domain registration. You set it to point the www or other subdomain to wherever you want, in my case the space that Earthlink (home DSL provider) includes with the service.

You can also create email addresses name@yourdomain.com which simply forward mail to the address of your choice. There's no actual mailbox there; it just forwards. Handy when your actual email address must change. You simply change the forwarding to the new one and no one has to be informed of a new address.

This is far less costly than paying for full on hosting as you are only paying the so much per year domain registration.

That doesn't solve your issue about finding a place to host the site in the first place but will allow you to have a name you control mapped to it when you do find a host.

My problem is that given the limited space I have, I mostly just keep HTML files there and used Photobucket to host photos. A couple of years ago they changed things so they will no longer serve up an image file alone (incorporated into a page I have in my own web space) but return requests with a webpage and sometimes even that doesn't work right. I've played with other sites like imgur and Google but nothing I'm totally happy with. Not sure what they did to make money before but that must be why they changed.