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