Are you looking for free WordPress hosting? This article has information on several ways you can get free WordPress Hosting. Learn about WordPress blogging software, free WordPress via web hosting services, and the pros and cons of using free WordPress Hosting services.
There are three different ways to have free WordPress hosting.
• WordPress.com (not to be confused with WordPress.org) offers hosted blog accounts. This means that—similar to Blogger—you have immediate access to the blogging software without needing a web hosting account, and it’s free.
What you get includes:
- over a hundred themes to chose from
- customizable CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code
- three GB of storage
- an integrated statistics to track your site visitors
- ability to embed YouTube and/or Hulu video
- a global tag system that helps bring traffic to your site
- Akismet spam technology
- ability to import content from Blogger or TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, or a different WordPress blog
- ability to have multiple blogs and multiple authors of blogs, up to 35 users
- the ability to choose a public blog, a public unadvertised blog, or a private, members-only blog
- a wide range of free widgets to dress up your sidebar
- tracking replies on comments
- a pages feature that allows you to create standing web pages
- XML exports that you can take with you if you wish to switch to another software
- text ads, displayed “from time to time”
Premium features (not included with the free blog, but available for a fee) include:
- custom design
- adding your own domain name
- extra storage, up to 100 GB
- VideoPress, which allows you to upload video, which will be converted for you
- no adds
- unlimited users
- premium themes
• The second way to have free WordPress hosting is to download WordPress from WordPress.org and host it on your own server. In this case you avoid restrictions like: having to put up with advertising or pay to use your own domain name, or only have three gigs of storage. You can use premium themes (or design your own) and have complete control of your blog or website.
You do need to be sure that your server set-up meets WordPress’s minimum requirements. As of late June, 2011, these requirements included:
- PHP version 5.2.4 at minimum
- MySQL version 5.0 at minimum
for WordPress 3.2.
The requirements for WordPress 3.1 are:
- PHP version 4.3 at minimum
- MySQL version 4.1.2 at minimum
Apache (in particular, the mod_rewrite Apache module) or Nginx servers are recommended, but not required, as long as the server supports PHP and MySQL.
• Many shared Linux web hosting plans offer free access to WordPress as part of the perks you get with hosting. Often in these situations, access to WordPress is provided through either Simple Scripts or through Fantastico De Luxe. In either case, the installation is quick and easy, and you have the same freedoms to use premium themes, your own domain name, etc. that you do when you host WordPress on your own server. As an additional benefit, you will likely receive notification of updates through the installer program.