How To Make A Free Website Online

Do you want to create your own website, with no cost and no software to download on your computer? Do you want to be able to edit this website, add content, images, videos and pages from any computer, using only the web browser?

As internet technology advances at a rapid pace, website building become more accessible to a lot of people, even those who consider themselves computer "dummies". In fact, creating your own website has become as simple as using a word processor like Microsoft Word.

And it doesn't cost a dime to make a free website online. Your only investment is your time. If you turn this into a hobby, you can do it on your free time. And you would be amazed to find out later that you can make some money from your website as a lot of people do nowadays. Here's how to make a free website online.

How to Start

The first thing you need to start a website is an idea. What are your objectives in creating a website? Is it to showcase your talents or skills? To post your latest travel photos or funny videos? To promote your business or your band? Or to simply express your political or personal opinion?

Whatever your main objective is, it should be clear to you. Write your ideas down on a piece of paper. If you want to create a website that a lot of people will find interesting, you could use the Google Keywords tool to find out what people are searching on Google. The more searches for a keyword means its popular and there are lots people interested in the topic. You could also check Google Trends to see what's currently "hot".

Now that you know what topics your website will focus on, let look for places where you can put up free website, or what we call "web hosts".

Free Website Hosts

There are a lot of free web hosts but I could only recommend some. Here is a rundown:

• Blogger - this is a blog hosting platform owned by Google. You will have the URL or web address in the Blogspot domain name. For example: "http://mytunafishingtips.blogspot.com". What's good about Blogger, aside from the fact that it's integrated with your Google account, is that it has a lot of pre-built templates or designs which you can modify with Gadgets. If you create a good Blogger site or "blog", you might even consider putting Google Adsense ads to make some money.
• Tripod - this is one of the earliest free web hosting services by Lycos. In fact, it's contemporary, Geocities, had already closed shop, making Tripod one of the longest lasting free web hosts around. What's good about Tripod is it's an excellent training ground for learning HTML and FTP. It has an online web builder but it also allows you to create your website on your desktop and upload the files via FTP.
• Weebly - this one of the newest free web hosting services. Weebly allows you to create a website with drag and drop options, meaning you don't have to be a design guru to come up with cool and professional websites. You can use your own domain name with Weebly, but since we're talking of free, you may use a web address such as "example.weebly.com"
• Webs - Webs allows you to have your personal, group or business website running in minutes. You get a free website hosted on their domain name, such as http://coronamocha.webs.com/

There are more free webhosts where can you make a free website online but I've just mentioned four of my favorites so as not to confuse you with tons of options. You can in fact try them all and compare them on these criteria:

• Usability. Is it user friendly? It is easy to enter text, upload images, add videos and so on? Is the dashboard confusing?
• Design options. Does it offer a lot of pre-built designs? It is easy to modify and customize these designs? How hard is it to add items to the header, sidebar and footer?
• Advertising. Does it add advertisements to your pages? Does it allow you to add your own advertisements?

Making a free website online is a good learning experience for new webmasters and bloggers. And it is also a favorite activity of veterans who consider free websites as part of their business. It also allows them to experiment on new ideas without the cost of buying domain names and paying for hosting.

Good luck and I hope you found these links and tips useful and you now have a better idea how to make a free website online