Free
Learn how to build a website for free:
So you want to build a website but you don’t have any money to spare, can you learn how to build a website for free? It is possible to build a website for free but you probably will sacrifice control, power or useability but if you are on a shoe string budget and have no other choice a free website is better than no website and you can always upgrade to paid products and services as your website becomes profitable. There is also the option of using a free service such as a FaceBook Page to put your business or idea online without its own stand alone website however again you sacrifice control when you rely on another company to completely provide your web presence.
Free Domains?
It is very unlikely you will be able to get your own top level domain name for free unless it is tied to some other paid service or product such as hosting and even then you may not actually have ownership of the domain if it is being paid for by a third party. Domains in general are one of the cheapest things you need to build a website however considering they can cost as little as seven dollars for a full year of registration you should be able to afford them, just skip that value meal at mcdonalds! However if you insist on doing everything for free there are url redirection and shortening options that are free that will allow you to get a short url that you can then redirect to your real domain if in the future you upgrade and buy one. A common URL shortening service is TinyUrl. Another option is CJB.net which allows you to create a url like www.yourname.cjb.net this redirect url lets you change where it points without losing your traffic however you either need to point it to your ip address or some other url that you control.
Free Hosting?
Finding free hosting was much easier in the early days of the internet when venture capital was pumping money into any internet company, there were even companies like TerraShare that paid YOU to build a website on their hosting, splitting the advertising revenue with you. Obviously this was not a sustainable business practice and many free hosts went out of business or changed their models to pay for service. You can still find hosts offering free services to build your website on their servers however they usually require you to display ads on your website or limit your bandwidth and server resources so severly that you are forced to upgrade to paid services once your website gets popular. The best option is to find a host that will be able to scale up your services as your website grows, many shared virtual hosting accounts cost only a few dollars a month which eliminates the possibility of your hosting being shut down and losing all your hard work. Angelfire still offers free website hosting and many free building tools too however I would suggest that there are other hosting providers that are more focused on paid services and are willing to work with you to scale up your websites as needed without worrying about becoming too big and popular for the host.
Free CMS?
Once you have a free domain and hosting you need the tools to actually build your website and there are many free options for CMS and designing tools. Many of the popular web design software companies offer either free limited trials or very basic versions that are free or cheap. For instance the graphic design software Photoshop is expensive for its premium products however they offer Photoshop Elements for a lower price with less options which is perfect for a newbie trying to build their first website and Adobe even offers free limited time trials to see if you even need their software. While web design software can be found cheap or free you might not even need it if you only want to work online you could use a free CMS to build your website. WordPress.com offers a free hosted version on their script that would make building a website for free very easy as it combines a domain, hosting, and the CMS in one package. Then using WordPress designing and updating a free website becomes as easy as drag and drop or finding a free theme to create the layout and style you want.
So is it possible to build a website for free? As you can see combining the various free options online today you can indeed setup and complete a website without spending any money. While I suggest spending the small registration fee for a domain and a cheap virtual hosting account to get full control and ability to scale up quickly if you are really trying to save money you can find free products and services to get your online presence up and running today.