These days, getting a free website is easy. Whether you want to start a small online business or just want to share your opinions with the rest of the world, you can get a website of your own with just a few clicks of the mouse. Before getting that site, however, you first need to answer the question, what do you want to do with your website?

If you would just like to share information with visitors, then a blog is the ideal solution for you. A blog allows you to post articles, pictures, videos as well as links to other web sites, and it requires little technical knowledge. Visitors are also allowed to write and upload comments about what you’ve posted, and you can manage them, editing certain comments and deleting others you find inappropriate.

A blog is the way to go if you would like to build a reputation as an expert on a particular subject in order to launch a career as a freelance consultant. A hosted blog service allows you to set up a blog in a matter of minutes. You can easily design your blog using the site’s pre-designed templates and write and post entries using its text editors. An alternative is to use free content articles from content generating sources other than yourself.

If you would like to restrict access to your blog to family and friends, you can create your blog using an online diary service or a tumblelog. These blogs are essentially online journals or scrapbooks where you can post photos, videos, text entries and links to other sites. You can also use your online diary to social network in online communities.

If you’re creating a site for an online business, however, you will need to use a free web hosting service to create your site. A web site set up on a free web host allows you to include e-commerce features such as multiple e-mail accounts, a shopping cart and online payment solutions.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of disadvantages to using free web hosting. For example, many hosts will offset hosting costs by placing their own advertising on your free site. Your URL will look something like this mybusinessname.webhost.com, which many clients might interpret as unprofessional. And if you exceed the amount of bandwidth you are allocated by the web host and your site receives a lot of traffic, many of your visitors might not be able to enter it.If you’re okay with these restrictions, then a free web host solution is for you. Once your online venture starts to become a success, you can easily upgrade to a paid web host provider.

If you’re interested in using a free web host to set up your site, here are some things to look out for when picking the host to use.

First, how much web space are you allocated by the host? Consider what your needs are and whether you intend to embed a lot of pictures, sound files and video clips. You should also consider if the web space allocation will give your site room to grow in the future.

Two, does the web host allow FTP access, so you can upload pages you’ve designed yourself once you’ve learned how?

Three, what is the maximum file size and what are the kinds of files the web host allows you to upload to your free web site?

Fourth, how fast or reliable is the web host? If your site frequently down or has slow access, then you will lose visitors and business since they will look for another site.

Five, is the bandwidth allocated to you by the free web host enough for your need? One to three GB of bandwidth allocation should be enough if you’re just starting your e-commerce site.

There’s little difficulty in getting a free website; the challenge lies in creating and maintaining an interesting one that will make people want to visit it over and over again.