Most colleges these days offer free web hosting to their students under their college website domain- a sub-domain. This is especially useful to students who need to set up their own websites but lack either the tools or finances to host it elsewhere. The college also builds up its online presence and obtains another valuable source of information.
Colleges and universities usually have vast amounts of space on their websites and generally are taken to be reputable and a credible source of information. Seeing a college domain in the URL of any website can let visitors know that the information in the website that they are viewing is approved and hosted by the school. This in turn creates a sense of reliability and accuracy for the website itself. This alone is a huge benefit to any websites hosted by colleges.
Having your website hosted by colleges also gives you free access to a top end web host and hosting package. The web host your college employs likely has high uptime, 24 hours customer service as well as high bandwidth limits. While this may not directly impact you as someone who hosts his website on the school domain, it does mean that your website is not likely to suffer from high downtimes or get taken off line due to overconsumption of bandwidth.
Also, placing your website on the college servers gives you a ready-made set of audience and traffic for your newly founded website. College students and alumni all surf the college website frequently, placing your website on this server can allow you to harness the traffic from the college site. Although this is usually not a significantly large demographic, it is nonetheless a good start for any budding web page owner.
However, it does not mean that by hosting your website on your college server it always a good thing. For one, your URL becomes significantly harder to remember and type. This may not seem like an important constraint, but it does limit the uses of college web hosting primarily to informative websites rather than for business, affiliate marketing, and perhaps even blogging. Having a long URL with a sub-domain and a domain will make it harder for people to remember the website address.
Furthermore, with the limits imposed by school regulations it is often difficult to host your website on college servers. Apart from informative websites, many other websites are prohibited from using college resources to host. Business websites or blogs are often considered inappropriate material for college resources, not to mention other forms of more illicit websites.
Nevertheless, using college resources for web hosting of websites may not be the most suitable for all forms of web pages, it is still a viable option for those who wish to do so. If you have a college approved website which you need to host, try using web hosting at colleges first before changing over to a paid service if needed. After all, college resources are still free.
Teen Web Hosting Plans
It is not easy for a teenager or a youth to set up a website of their own. Purchasing a web host, a domain, as well as setting up the actual website itself or hiring a website programmer, all these involve significant investment and money, of which is usually lacking in a typical teenaged budget. Ironically, it is this demographic, of 13-19 years of age, that generally has the most vociferous opinions and ideas to blog, write, or make a video, about. Thankfully, there are many teen web hosting plans and alternatives available to the enterprising teen wanting to start up his own website for little to no cost involved.
A viable alternative is to use a free web hosting plan for your website. This allows you to spend money only on your internet domain while your web hosting is free. Of course, the downside is that there will be advertisements on your website ran by the host in exchange for providing you a free service. However, the free web hosting service offered is a highly useful alternative for cash-strapped teenagers. Free web hosting websites can be found easily by conducting a Google search, but usually come with minimal web space and bandwidth, which can be upgraded by paying a fee. Even with this upgrade, these services are usually cheap enough to provide a viable and competitive web hosting solution for teenagers.
Another possibility is to have your website hosted on your college or university domain. This is another free alternative that you may choose to explore. College resources are generally available to any student who wishes to use it to host their personal website, and this form of teen web hosting is free for the student as well. However, there are many disadvantages to using such a system. For one, it will only last until you graduate. Also, having a long URL is never a good thing when it comes to websites. These solutions are neither scale-able nor expandable, meaning that your website will always be constrained to the technical space and bandwidth available to you. However, as most teens are currently in their schooling years, college web hosting is a viable alternative to the enterprising new website owner.
Although the free alternatives are extremely popular among teen web hosting plans, they all have similar drawbacks in that they often have very limited bandwidth and web space, as well as a lack of publishing platform and 24 hours customer service.
For the fledgling website owner who wants a professional, full web hosting plan suitable for the needs of a teen aged website owner, there are various paid plans which cater to the teen aged demographic. Most top end web hosts offer a discounted or modified web hosting plan designed with the teen blogger in mind. Searching through the top web hosts such as Blue Host or Dream Host for a suitable web hosting plan that suits you will likely be the best option for getting a full web hosting plan.
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