There are three primary places to search for web space.

Your Internet Service Provider

If you have a dial-up account with an ISP, such as NetOne, CacheNet, AOL, MSN, or any other, chances are that they will give you a portion of their web server for storing your homepage at no or little additional cost. Most ISP's restrict you to 5 or 15 MB of space (which should be plenty) and your page's URL will be something like www.n1.net/~yourname/ or members.aol.com/yourusername. The benefits of using your ISP for your website is that most ISP's are local and offer great customer service and they are easy to use. Disadvantages are that many ISP's do not support newer Internet technology for your page. You can rarely go wrong with using an ISP to store your webpage.

A Web Hosting Service

The Internet is full of web hosting services. These are businesses that will host your page, usually in return for one of two things - money or advertising. Nearly half of the URL's on the Internet belong to free web hosting services. These businesses own many servers and will give you 'free' space on one of them as long as you display either a banner on your site, or allow a pop-up window containing advertising to be displayed when visitors enter your site. Tripod.com and Geocities.com are the largest web hosting sites on the Internet. Homepage.com, the site you are reading this page from is also a 'free' web hosting service. Notice the banner at the top? As explained in the posting to the Internet section, different servers allow different types of posting - FTP, web-based, etc. Some ask for nearly no information at sign-up, others ask for a lot of info and will send you E-mail and/or sale your information to other businesses. Some hosting services will allow your site to be ad free for a small fee. Your sites URL is likely to be yoursite.server.com like batc.homepage.com, or www.server.com/yoursite. The first rule in choosing a web hosting service is to research it and make sure it is the place for you on the Internet. Know their rules, limitations, and reliability before signing on.

For a large list of 'free' web hosting services with reviews and user comments, go to thefreesite.com. This page has many other free resources for web designers. My personal web hosting favorites are:
homepage.com - allows FTP access and is easy to set-up and configure. Doesn't support frames.

webjump.com - haven't used it, but haven't heard one negative review.

tripod.com - fastest and most reliable servers, but users are bombarded with pop-up ads. Expect E-mail from them after you sign up.

crosswinds.net - offers ad free web space, with FTP and web-based uploading.

There are probably hundreds of web hosting sites on the Internet. Do your research and find one that fits your needs.

www.yourdomain.com

Getting your own domain on the Internet is quite easy. The hardest part is finding a domain name that hasn't yet been taken. You can choose from .com, .net, and .org as extensions, however businesses are required to have .com extensions. You can go through the procedure of getting your own domain at Network Solutions. The cost is $70 for the first two years and $35 dollars a year every year thereafter (that's less than $3 a month). Before you can claim your own domain name, you have to find a place to store your information and you must supply this information when registering your domain. Most ISP's will host your domain and give you a large amount of webspace (50MB+), e-mail addresses (you@yourdomain.com), and sometimes control over your own server for a nominal fee ($15 to $50+ a month, depending on what you want). If you don't yet have a domain, most ISP's will go through the process of getting one for you. If you own a business, they can even support Internet sales and credit card transactions. This homepage is hosted by digi-wave.com. There are many businesses on the web that offer web hosting. Be sure to study what features they offer.

Many Internet based web hosting services, such as tripod.com, will also host your domain. Some do this for free, however, they limit the amount of webspace, give you no E-mail addresses, and are often slow and unreliable. If you have the money, you can also connect your own server to the Internet and control everything yourself. This can be quite expensive - over $1500 for a server, $100/month for a dedicated line to the Internet, and fees for connections directly to the Internet.

My suggestion is to have a local ISP host your own domain and to do it quick - names are going fast. This is the most cost effective and reliable. If you decide you don't like the company hosting your domain, you can usually transfer it to another for free. Cache.net is offering great rates for domain hosting and will even register a domain name at no extra charge (above the $70 Network Solutions fee). Having your own domain is definitely the best way to go for the price.

Getting your own little niche on the Internet can be fun, educational, and really exciting.

GETTING LISTED ON SEARCH ENGINES

If you have a page that you want to be listed on search engines, doing so is very easy. Getting your page so it is not search result number 2,561 is much harder.

Rule #1 regarding search engines - If you don't have something to show the world, don't list yourself on search engines. Only list your site if it has content that others would be interested in.

Adding your site to a search engine is easy, just go to that search engine's homepage and look for a link labeled "add your site" or "recommend a site". You will then fill out a form and your site will be added to the database in anywhere from an hour to 3 months or so. Most take several weeks. You can also use help pages like easy-submit, which list links to 50 search engines' add pages. This will speed up the process. Site-list will automatically register you with 30 search engines for free, just fill out one form and they will send it to the search engines.

The trick to getting listed high in a search is, well, tricky. Search engines search based on different criteria. Some list pages based on their page title only, some list by use and frequency of words in your page, some list by META tag information, and some list by a combonation of these. META tags are tags that are added in the head section of your HTML document. They are used only by search engines. In your META tags, you list keywords that people might search to find your page and also a description of your site. The description is what follows the page address in a search, telling the searchers what the page is about. Webpromote offers a service that will build optimized META tags for your page that will help you get a higher listing in search engines. Just remember that most search engines index millions of sites, the likelihood that you will suddenly be number one is very slim.

Here are my simple rules for getting a high listing -

1. Add good META tags to your page. Webpromote is the place to go.
2. Have a good TITLE that describes your site and contains words that people might search under.
3. Use the words people might search under frequently throughout your webpage.
4. Register with search engines, but not too often - some will not list you if you register too often.
5. If possible, register several pages on your site, each one using different META tags, TITLE's and frequently used words, but don't register more than one page a day from your site, or some search engines will ignore all your pages.
6. DON'T CHEAT!! Many websites use words like "free", because it is often searched for, but they don't offer anything free. Only list information with search engines that is correct.
7. Be patient. Most search engines take several weeks to get you listed. Don't expect hundreds of visitors overnight.
8. Check to see where you are listed on the major search engines with Rank This!
9. Make a site worth visiting. It doesn't do any good to get a high search ranking and have visitors leave the moment they look at your site. Use good web design and offer them something they want.

Getting listed high on search engines is quite a chore. If you would rather not go through the work, there are many companies on the Internet that will do the work for you, for a fee.