Reliable free webhost with easy sitebuilder

[Gerrit]

I am looking for a free or close-to-free webhost for a small site. Necessarities:
- has to be reliable (= not likely to be out of business or defunct anytime soon)
- has to have back-ups enabled or leave the webmaster the option to make back-ups himself
- must have an easy sitebuilder/templates for those not familiar with HTML


The free hosts I tried so far are webs.com (very easy and user friendly sitebuilder and has been around for many years, however not sure if back-ups are possible there) and everyoneweb.com (allows back-ups, quite user friendly templates, not sure if they are financially backed well to survive long time)

Any suggestions?



PS: anticipating on the "why free" etc questions...

I don't like to rely on free hosting, and for my existing website I have a paid host. Not a very cheap one even, but I happily pay it because I have faith in them and they are very user friendly and reliable.

So I am not refusing to pay. Thing is, this new site I want to launch is in a testing phase and before spending money on it, I wanna see how things work and if it catches on. The moment I notice that I want to continue the site on the long haul, I will either upgrade to a paid package or move it to the same paid host I have for my other site. I however want to have it free or close to free just for the first half year or so, and then make the decision if the site will be continued or not. Only during that testing phase to see if the project is a success I prefer to keep it free, once I know the site will be continued long term I don't mind spending money.

Hope that answers the question that would have otherwise come Now let me hear your suggestions please.

 

[WebIntellects - Rob]

I haven't seen many free web hosting offers in here. But I have seen a lot of them on freewebspace and I recommend you visit that forum

 

[nucleotide]

i tried everyone web and got THIS:

Server Error in '/WP' Application.
The process cannot access the file 'e:\everyoneweb\WA\DataFilesDistributeurs\EveryOneWeb_LijstWebsites.XML' because it is being used by another process.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.IO.IOException: The process cannot access the file 'e:\everyoneweb\WA\DataFilesDistributeurs\EveryOneWeb_LijstWebsites.XML' because it is being used by another process.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[IOException: The process cannot access the file 'e:\everyoneweb\WA\DataFilesDistributeurs\EveryOneWeb_LijstWebsites.XML' because it is being used by another process.]
System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath) +7712640
System.IO.FileStream.Init(String path, FileMode mode, File

 

[SiberForum]

nucleotide I suppose you need contact your web host for this.
make sure your web application is working properly

 

[Gerrit]

Has anyone ever tried Jimdo.com or Weebly.com?

Especially the latter one gets very favourable comments from magazines such as Time and from BBC even ; on the other hand I wonder how they manage to survive long-term with no restrictions to number of pages and no ads? (also, not sure if backups are possible)

Jimdo reached out to those whose Geocities site was removed to transfer to Jimdo and got favourable comments. Also here, not sure if they allow back-ups.



Has anyone ever tried any of those two? From similar hosts with "what you see is what you get" sitebuilders I only tried everyoneweb.com and webs.com (not sure if the latter has a backup option, but it surely has been going for several years and was very user friendly)

 

[Ray]

I would try a free host that offers cPanel. cPanel has a built in WYSIWYG Editor.

 

[Gerrit]

Any such suggestions?


When it comes to back-ups ... On a different forum someone showed me this: Backup - Jimdo Help

Do I understand this correctly that HTTrack can back-up ANY website regardless where you host it? If this is correct, then the question weither Jimdo/Webs/Weebly/etc have backup options becomes irrelevant because you could back-up ANY website regardless where it's hosted and use the backup to move the site to a different host if you wish so.
However, that is if I do indeed understood this correctly?



Anyone who has experience with Weebly or Jimdo themselves?

 

[ldcdc]

As far as I recall, HTTrack will download the files as a visitor sees them, for offline viewing. It will change the links to internal ones, which means you'll have to basically edit all of them before uploading to the new host. Besides, all this assumes you're not using databases.

To backup your website you need to download the files via FTP, and if you're using databases, make a backup of those as well. The host's control panel usually helps.

If you're using a website builder, creating a real backup may or may not be a real option, as the site may rely on the host's infrastructure and proprietary software to work properly.