4. Search engine optimization – Some free hosting communities are so large and so fluid that it takes some time get new pages into major search engines. People abandon their pages at such a high rate that is hard to keep up with live sites versus abandoned real estate.

Also, any page rank you get goes to hosting provider and not to you that is one of perks of having your own domain name.

5. Tracking – It always helps to know who is coming to your website and how they got there. You might have to search around for some type of free tracking service. This is very important if you plan to make money off your free web hosting account.

My picks Bravenet, Yahoo Geocities and Blogger. I have used all three and I haven’t had time lately to investigate other services. I will add to list in near future.

1.Count number of pages in your web site and add a buffer for future expansion. 2.Determine average number of characters per page – not number of words. The number of characters includes everything, letters, spaces, and, punctuation. Most word processing programs such as MS Word will count number of characters for you. 3.Multiply average number of characters times number of pages in step 1. 4.Now: one character = 1 Byte, and 8 Bytes = 1 bit, so divide total number of characters determined in step 3 by 8. This gives you total number of bits. 5.1000 bits = 1 KB; 1000 KB = 1 MB, and 1000 MB = 1 GB. Note: For technical minded 1 GB actually equals 1024 MB, but there is really no necessity to get that picky in this case. 6.Divide total number of bits by 1,000,000 and your answer will be number of MB of disk space you need to rent from hosting service.

Determining amount of transfer space you will require is largely an approximation based on number of visitors you expect per day. Most of better hosting services provide you with about 3 GB, which is ample for average web site. If you expect more than a thousand visitors a day, you will, of course, need more transfer space.

The top ten hosting companies are listed conveniently at http://www.webhostinginspector.com/index.php?from=1 along with their rankings, disk space offered, bandwidth (transfer space), and reviews.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ About author: Nancy Casseur is a Team Leader with Strong Future International Marketing Group (SFI Marketing Group). SFI is considered to be largest and most successful affiliate program in world. To find out more about SFI go to http://www.moreinfo247.com/8459751.35/FREE. Nancy is also Webmaster of two websites; http://www.newsiteinfo.net and http://www.notreallyretired.com . Copyright 2005 by Nancy Casseur.