Can anyone give me some advice on starting up a web site, pitfalls,do's/don'ts.?

I was hoping to start up a web site for my small business. I know some free hosting sites are out there but I don't know who to trust. The last thing I want is some bad adds or pop ups on my site because someone else has control. Are there things to watch out for?

Whatever you do dont use a free hosting option!
Heres some of the many horror stories:
Site crashes constantly, Files are lost, Ads and pop ups, They stop providing it and charge you stupid sums of money, you cant always access all of your files, they dont answer your emails when you want to move sites, If you have a problem you are classed as low priority - it took me three weeks to get a simple answer from one! There are many more that people will tell you about too!

If you value your business but dont have a great cash flow then choose a reliable host who will be there for you, give you 24/7 support and give you the option to grow your site as your custom grows.

Here is my personal recommendation:
I am personally hosted with www.sdhinternet.co.uk
I have tried many others that claim to be free and hit you with a ridiculous charge in the second year. At least here I can be confident that I pay the same low rate all the time. And I pay monthly.

You will love the cost - because it is CHEAP!
拢1.99 a month!
Thats all!

For this you get:
200mb Storage Space
500mb Bandwidth
10 Pop3 Emails, 10 Auto responders

Front Page Extensions:
CGI ,PHP,ASP ,SSI

Unix Platform,Custom Error Docs ,Online Control Panel ,99% Uptime, 24/7 Support

And this is their basic option!

They are an absolute God send, I knew very little about building websites or php when I first started, but they have helped me every step of the way! And the 24/7 support is really 24/7 - I can get hold of them when I need to all hours of the day or night. They have helped me out with obtaining free templates, walked me through how to mod my site, and to be quite honest with you if it wasnt for then my site would still be a domain name sitting on a free server with a rubbish template that no one could/ would want to access!

Its certainly worth a look, I've tried many others and their service just hasnt been as up to scratch as here. In fact I've moved all my websites over and got a great bundle deal too. So if you have many sites, they might just give you a really good price to host them all.

Good luck in your search,
Kelly.

Yes you can get one like me its free
i creat one if you want to see plz go to
http://www.freewebs.com/sowvikdutta/
and enjoy

There are plenty of free hosting websites. They all put ads on your site. The best thing to do is get your own website. It only cost $10 per month. They give you the webspace, up to 10 email accounts and they host it for you. The best part is you can resell the service with a link or baner on your site, and it becomes self funding when other people use the same service you are using. They are called Global domains international.

You get full control of all aspect of the website you make. They don't put ads on the site. You can put anything you want on it. I use the service and promote it as well. Now I make over $100 per month so far just because I promoted it. Now I have a website that cost me nothing, and I earn an income from it as well. You can do the same thing. Then you will have two streams of income. look here http://www.homeforwork.ws
mark@homeforwork.ws

If you're looking for a real system, check out the really simple method web site. it's cool because it's 100% free.

http://reallysimplemethod.com

they talk about how to set up paypal, choose a web host, sell stuff online, transfer files, and more. all free. very nice...

If you are serious about websites either for personal or your business, don't go to free web hosting as they are usually not reliable and you may end up losing all your hard work. Free web hosts usually put advertisements on your websites and it could be annoying.

If you like to create websites (usually you will end up more than 1 website, I got more than 100 websites in about 6 months' time), go for multiple web hosting services where you could host all your websites in one account.

I would like to suggest following webhosting , they are excellent.

Hostmonster http://www.hostmonster.com/track/ryukend...

They offer hosting of "unlimited domains" and you will get massive webspace of 300000 MB (300 GB ). They only charge $5.95/month and they offer "a free Domain Name" and installing service called "Fantastico". By using Fantastico, you could create own forum, photo gallery, shopping cart (e-commerce),your own auction site and your own blogs within few seconds. They also offer "Free Website Builder" as well.
Visit the site to check details.

Hostmonster http://www.hostmonster.com/track/ryukend...

Domains
Following site is quite good to register domains as price is reasonable with free privacy. Some charge about $5/ year just for free privacy.

IPOWER http://www.anurl.com/?TXIBE

there are so many sites those are providing hosting services and reliable but they are not free and no body provided you free services ...See after all they also doing business dear

http://www.searchenginerankings.com.au

Stay away from "free hosts" or anything promising something for nothing. Going that direction just makes things bad from my experience. I recommend to start with finding a good web host. One that will answer all of your questions. I personally like HostNed. Been using them for years and highly recommend. They have great support and very easy on the wallet.

Good luck!