Free web host difficulties

I've been trying a lot of different free webhosts recently in my search to find one where I could host my php applications. I've been using free-webhosts.com to find hosts... plus the v7forums...

When someone mentions a blog or a forum, photo gallery, they are talking about php applications. Many of these also require mysql, which I'm not going to get into with this blog.

In my last blog, I discussed the tiny web gallery that I'd downloaded....

All free webhosts are not the same...

When I first set up the gallery, I found a really nice webhost, and the gallery worked the way it was supposed to... Then a couple days later, the host went off-line for a week... When they came back on-line, it was with the warning that they were closing, but would be in touch with us about paid hosting.

I found various other webhosts where the "safe mode" didn't allow visitors to join and upload their own pics.(1. see below).... The majority of the providers fell into this category... This would be ok, if I didn't wish for interactivity ....

I also found several hosts where getting the gallery (and wordpress), running was problematic, getting error pages and stuff (2. see below)... when it worked, it worked fine ... but there were all these server errors... One of those fixed the problem... but added banners...

cer33.com works well enough, when it works... I had a lot of difficulty with the login panel being down, + my firewall insists the site isn't safe... Most of us aren't going to visit a site when the firewall tells us to avoid it....

I found a really great site, that after I put up my php applications, and uploaded all of my html pages, my computer stopped being able to visit... I searched out the problem, discovered there was some kind of a blacklist in effect... So... I didn't want to be blocked from visiting my own site... After writing to the people that had blacklisted my ip address did no good, I wrote to my isp.... They told me that they couldn't make the blacklist go away...

freehostingcloud.com Works very well, but when I discovered that you can't use ad-on domains, that was a bit of a non-starter for me. If you'd care to transfer your domain at $15/year, they'd be a good free host, otherwise you're stuck with their subdomain, and when you want to pick up and move (for whatever reason) you'd have to start over with a new address...

Then there was the host that stuck in pop behinds... (popup ads behind your webpage) several of these would showup... every click would produce more!

Eventually I found a host that offered the first year free... as long as I had a credit card... Support is terrible. There's no user forum, and simple questions get referred to links supposedly containing the answer... No straight answers. I'm having all kinds of difficulties specific to that host and support refuses to give me a straight answer.

My .ht files didn't load correctly, they don't chmod properly... they revert over and over... when I do get them chmodded, I still have to upload the file and replace the one I'd previously uploaded... When I ask support for help, I'm told the prob is in my settings, and they don't provide support for third party software...

In spite of these difficulties, I did get my tiny web gallery working, and a word press blog going... Word press DOES have a support forum where many of the issues can be searched, Unfortunately the threads are closed... I saw plenty of threads closed without any answers, people were told to use the search function...


1) 000webhost.com
http://www.my3gb.com/


2)00000web.com


I'll add to the list of hosts I tried when I track the rest of them down...

Good luck y'all...
stone

Free photo software downloads

my experience setting up twg182

I was recently attempting to help a friend learn to use paint shop pro, and used the free study plan offered by webtechu as a guide.

I had no difficulty getting through the class when I took it, but my friend struggled, even with coaching...

I did a little online research to find an easier photo manipulation software that was free. Microsoft is running this "to the cloud" campaign.... I've looked at it, and... I kept looking for something else...

Photo pos pro is a neat piece of software... now offered free, although their EULA still tells us that it's strictly a limited time test... not sure when they are going to correct that... it hasn't expired on my computer...

I've found that you can cut stuff out of the picture easier than psp, you can paint stuff out of the picture very easily... The website offers image mapping at a cost... something that came included in the free psp 7 download...

Psp 7 was the last free download from paint shop pro, I found it a few years ago still being offered on a private website... She now wants people to pay her money to get to that section of her site... dunno 'bout the legal implications of that...

Photoscape makes animated gifs very easily, even easier than psp 7. It makes 1 picture out of several (not a panorama), I normally use note pad for those table type of arangements...

This is one made with photoscape...

January colour, coded with note pad, and then saved by clicking prt scrn....

I still can't do anything with gimp....

I use irfanview more than I use any of the others combined... You can crop, resize, and optimize the pic for the web when saving, all in a few clicks!

Eventually, I was able to coach my friend through the psp course...


And that started my search for a decent photo Gallery for her to display her efforts!

After reading the specs on several free downloads, I chose tiny web gallery.

After downloading, I needed to upload to my site...

I'd never used ftp before... I chose filezilla.
I LOVE filezilla! It doesn't require any smarts! Plug in the info provided by the webhost in file manager, and it's ready to go! I tested it on several free webhosts... with no probs at all...

After uploading tiny web gallery (twg182) to my site, I had to find a way to open it...

Now, please understand, there are complete easy to follow instructions on the site... But I come from the old school of... instructions are for when nothing else works...

Eventually, I found a way to open TWG... It asked that the administrator password be changed... b4 I could do anything else... I found that easily... Then there were some folders and files that needed to be chmod 777... It's explained in the directions, which I wasn't reading...

Setup was amazingly simple even for a complete NOOB like myself... Pages of php that might as well have been greek for all that I understood it... I would have had an easier time of it by simply following instructions, but I found my way around by trial and error, having to delete the software off my site and upload it a gain after making a complete hash of things a couple of times... TWG has a user forum for when you get in a real jam, and Twg's creator is very responsive.

So... after making one for my friend, I added a TWG photo gallery to my site as well.

I think it looks really good, there's a link where my visitors can join and create a folder and upload pics from their gardens...

Setting this capability was explained on the site, and involved a couple of snippets of php code (provided) added to the twg interface...

No big deal for someone following instructions, (I wasn't doing that... instructions are for after I've finished the project) When I added the code incorrectly, the php warning that we've all seen, showed up instead of the photo gallery...

So... I had to go back in and fix the code I'd just added.... I found that I could get into the project in a number of ways, I really liked the easy accessibility. There's the twg interface where you can operate it almost like a wysiwyg... this opens out to see the files... but we aren't limited to that, I went in through the site's file manager to make changes as well as uploading files that I'd made a hash of using filezilla.

The TWG Configuration page has a debug file to let us know which files are screwed up... I delete those files with filezilla, and upload new ones from the original folder on my desktop... Easy!

Facebook & Privacy

Facebook & Privacy
Facebook is in the news again, for privacy violations... This time the problem is those 3rd party apps.
I went into my privacy settings and blocked those stupid things after about the 20th or 30th time someone sent an invitation that I couldn't even get to without handing over the keys to my profile...

Over at myspace, those third-party apps were a leading cause of people getting phished... Wuz surprised when I eventually succumbed to peer pressure and created a facebook profile, that there was so little else that seemed to be going on at facebook...

Over at myspace, we could design our profiles and show off our artistic nature...Here's one...
http://www.myspace.com/stonethegardener
We had groups that were pretty active until myspace messed with the coding to the point where we were unable to use them for a year+.

And on facebook everyone is worried about their virtual farms *irony*

South Park had a pretty cool episode about everyone going nuts over their facebook stuff... Wasn't even that exaggerated... Well, maybe it was...

Anyway, apparently having friends with third party apps can get your privacy info spread about, even if you don't use them!

Ok... Anyone concerned about privacy?

Anyone post anything on their profile they don't want the world to know?

People have been getting their homes broken into because they mentioned they were going out for the night... There was that teacher that got fired for complaining on facebook to her friends...

There was that dude that quoted a line from a movie... Had the front door busted in by the SWAT team 15 minutes later! Spent a year defending himself in a courtroom for quoting a movie!

Hmmm...

Anyone else wanna post pictures of bugs... instead of their kids?