You may be considering one of the free cheap web hosting services that you can find on the internet if you have a website that you want to get online but you don’t have much money. Free Linux hosting may be an excellent bargain for you if that website happens to be one that you are only looking to have some fun with, but it may not save you any money at all if you are trying to make a profit from that website.Paid hosting is available for just a couple of dollars a month and it is most likely going to be much more suitable for any type of site other that one that is just done for fun and is very small in size.
In order to determine if free Linux hosting is the right choice for you, you first need to understand how the hosting process works and then what issues you may run into by using free Linux hosting. Take your time and compare the needs of your website with what is offered by the free Linux hosting that you are considering. Choosing the right hosting now will prevent you from needing to perform the difficult task of moving your website and all of its files to another web hosting company later if you aren’t satisfied with the services. Free Linux hosting may be a blessing or a curse but you may not know which one right away.
No matter how much you pay for your Linux hosting, even if you get it for free, the process behind how it works is always the same. The files that make up your website are stored on a specially prepared computer known as a web server that is linked to the internet. When someone comes to visit your website and requests a page, the web server sends that page to the visitor’s browser. On a server running Linux all of this process is handled through a group of open source software applications that go by the acronym LAMP.
Linux is the operating system that runs the web server and acts as the brains of the operation controlling everything else that takes place. Apache is the name of the specific application that handles the delivery of the web page to the visitor so that it will appear in the window of a web browser. MySQL is a database server that will handle all of the information that needs to be stored in individual databases for your site to work properly.
This has become a very important part of the process since most content management systems now store your entire site in a database. PHP is a programming language that has replaced Perl as the most popular in use in the Linux hosting environment. All of these work smoothly together to deliver pages from your free Linux hosting to those people requesting them.
The Problems With Free Linux Hosting
Several issues can arise when you are using free Linux hosting that may make it unsuitable for your website. The first of these is how the web hosting company that you get the hosting account from pays for the hosting itself. You may be getting it free but it has to be paid for by someone. If your free Linux hosting has advertisements all over it then you may wish to choose another option.
Many web hosting companies that offer free Linux hosting will place a banner ad on your website, usually every page of your website, that you have no control over. While this may not seem like a big deal, many visitors avoid sites that have blatant advertising and the ads may be for products that offend you or your visitors. You will be much better served if you must use free Linux hosting to go with a web hosting company that tries to up sell you to other products and uses the profits from these up sells to cover the cost of the hosting. You may not like being sold to but it is the price you pay for free and at least your visitors aren’t looking at banner ads.
The other major issue with your free Linux hosting will raise its ugly head if your site gains any type of popularity. Even if your hosting is advertised as coming with unlimited storage space and data transfer you will find that it does have limits if you read the fine print. If your site starts getting a lot of visitors and goes over those limits then one of two things will happen, either your pages will load very slowly because your host has throttled your account or your site won’t load at all because your host has shut down your account. Do yourself a favor and spend a few dollars a month and avoid the hassles that come along with free Linux hosting.
