To create a free website you will need a long time to try every free service, and then you decide to continue or not, but in this article, we will save your time after many searches and trials to provide useful content navigating you to the final destination for creating a fully free website.
Let’s compare the best ways to create a fully free website.
Which one is more efficient for business needs and which would be better for blogging for example. So let’s specify our purpose from this website first.
The purpose of creating a free website is an important step before getting deeply
This step before you decide is to know what is the purpose of your free website? This question carries more than one meaning due to its importance.
Choose the purpose of your free website from the following:
- I want to provide articles and blogs.
- I want to provide an app developed site, to execute user functions.
- Likewise, I want to sell products. Ecommerce purpose.
- To share my work portfolio.
After you choose your purpose, let’s know more about the best ways to create a free website.
You have to know the following:
The cost of creating a website is the:
- Hosting.
- Domain name.
- SSL certificate.
Best techniques to create a free website
WordPress is the first and better way to create your website for free because it’s open-source for creating websites that are perfect for all the recent purposes.
Create a free WordPress website with free host or self-hosted
If your target is blogging and sharing articles, Also if your income from this website is by affiliate links or coupons. Then, if you used a free WordPress website that is in a subdomain from the WordPress domain, would be perfect solution to create your first website.
The previous way is perfect for affiliate content marketing and reviews only. Because it’s not available any advanced options due to that you cannot reach the host file manager or database.
Installing WordPress needs domain and host, get free domain
There is some free WordPress host, but it’s very limited, so you saved the hosting cost.
Let’s solve the domain name cost problem by using freenom for the free domain name and also its unlimited domain count, and you can change the DNS to add any website to this domain. For more about how to set up DNS for the website.
Steps: to Install WordPress in free hosting (self-hosted)
1- register in 000webhost
2- After registration, choose the free plan.
3- Choose one of its 3 options:
• Install WordPress.
• Install your site.
• use it’s a builder to build a website.
4- I will select WordPress to install.
5- It’s the standard version installed for WordPress is version 7 you can upgrade it to version 8 by the following steps.
• Press menu > website settings > general.
You will not be able to remove its branding name in the free hosting service, for example your website domain (website name .000webhost.com).
You have to reach the domain settings to set your domain name paid or free domain by setting up a name server (NS). And we can access these advanced settings by cPanel.
Free cPanel website hosting or WordPress hosting (free hosting)
One of the better websites who is providing free cPanel hosting which makes you able to install and host the WordPress website and to add a free domain or any domain is freehosting.
“The opportunity to own a free website is to practice, the paid website may be useful more and more advanced for professionals, So take your beginning steps in a free website.” Omar – Zone1on Author.
• Login or register in Free hosting website
• choose a free hosting plan with the following specifications and features
This free hosting doesn’t accept a free domain for hosting. But, you can apply for this trial to get WordPress hosting on free domain for 3 months as a free trial to use WordPress website + technical support from Zone1on.
10 GB of disk space
Unlimited bandwidth
1 hosted website
1 e-mail account
1 MySQL database
No subdomains
No domain aliases
Hosting on free servers.
PHP mail() and SSL are not included.
The 1 problem that will face is the SSL certificate, which will make your website appears unsafe for your traffic.
Due to “HTTP” protocol instead of “HTTPS” to appear.
There is one solution for a free SSL certificate, it’s arvancloud by following these steps:
Sign up at arvancloud and add your website to CDN by adding your domain and setting up your name server to point to arvancloud.
How to point name server to arvancloud?
When arvancloud would provide you a new name server to add as shown in the next image.
Copy these name servers and go to your domain name provider, then choose your domain > manage domain > DNS management > Edit / change name server. Maybe there is a difference between your domain name provider and the previous steps, but it’s close.
Now you have a full WordPress website with cPanel hosting, domain name, an SSL certificate for your website.
You can add plugins and themes to your website and customize them now.
More ways to create a free website and self-hosted for different purposes
Blogger website
Blogger is providing awesome service to create a free website without any cost, you have two options to create a free blogger website:
1- Domain in the blogspot.com subdomain
2- To get a free domain from Freenom.
Also, you can set up a paid domain, you just have to know how to add domain to blogger?.
For setting up your blogger website, it’s easy to add a theme or customize. Perhaps when you get too advanced, you will buy a new theme to make your website better and faster.
Blogger is very useful due to its advantages for blog or article website purposes.
Also, it’s perfect to add advertisement to your website AdSense.
Free e-commerce website
Now the following is suitable for an e-commerce website purpose, you can use one of the following to start a free website for selling products.
1- WooCommerce plugin for WordPress
Create your WordPress website by using free host and free SSL certificate, and add WooCommerce plugin to be able to sell products effectively.
And install the WooCommerce plugin for your website for free, as it’s free and paid plans are available.
2- Ecwid e-commerce
Ecwid is one of the e-commerce website service providers, with fewer features in the free plan and with two options for using it.
First to use Ecwid integration in a free WordPress website or blogger website.
The second option is to create a website at the Ecwid subdomain.
3- Shopify e-commerce website
Shopify is one of the e-commerce websites that has a high reputation. Due to its advanced options in the paid plans who help users to lead more sales and customer data.
Because it’s managing your stock, sales, clients, and marketing from one easy platform.
But if you started from the free plan, you will use a subdomain of the Shopify domain.
Create a free website for your portfolio
It’s a very professional way to show people your work which is many professionals are using this way to reach the audience and to do more freelance tasks, due to their skills.
On this website, you can create one landing page or more easy and fast by using the following website creation platforms:
- Mailchimp
- WordPress
- Blogger
- 000webhost
- Google site
Some of these website creation platforms maybe will provide you with a page or more in a free plan but a subdomain, because it’s not very important to have a short link for your portfolio.
You can attach the link in social media or on CV by QR code scan for example. So, it’s not a disadvantage to using a subdomain for a portfolio.
You want to create a free website to provide an online service or solution
For this purpose of website creation, you need to manage pages by coding or adding environmental applications to process code like python or JavaScript, or node.js, etc.
So, from most platforms that may give you this advanced option in cPanel.
Then you need a website with a cPanel like WordPress.
But, make sure that the free hosting plan provides limited resources that may drop your application at any time.
Finally, by the previous solutions you can create a fully free website without paying anything, but notice that these solutions is suitable for beginners, when your skills is more advanced the better to buy host for faster web and fewer troubles.
And paid domain for your website name which would be better to be paid for many reasons, also you may pay later for themes, plugins, services, tools, search engine optimization, website design and other many things. But you will feel that after you go deeper in the fully free website for learning.
