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 requires little technical knowhow on your part, and allows you to post a variety of content such as text entries, photos, video clips as well as links to other sites. Visitors can also post their comments on the various posts and you can manage these comments, editing and deleting offensive posts.

If you would like to establish a reputation for expertise on a particular subject so you can build a career as a freelance consultant, a blog is the ideal solution. A hosted blog service allows you to set up a blog in a matter of minutes. You can use the site’s pre-designed templates to create an attractive blog design and write and upload blog entries using its text editors. An alternative is to use free articles for your website from content generating sources other than yourself.

You can also create a blog that is accessible only to family and friends by using an online diary service or tumblelog. Tumblelogs are essentially online scrapbooks or journals where you can upload pictures, video clips, text entries as well as 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 the amount of bandwidth you are allocated is limited, which means that if you start to get a lot of visitors, many of them may not be able to access your site once you have exceeded your allocation. If you’re okay with these restrictions, then a free web host solution is for you. You can always upgrade to a paid web host once your business starts to take off.

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.

One, what is the amount of web space the host will give you? If you intend to put a lot of pictures, video clips and sound files, the allocation may not be enough for your needs. You should also consider if the web space allocation will give your site room to grow in the future.

Second, once you’ve gained some technical expertise and want to upload web pages that you’ve designed yourself to your site, does the web host allow FTP access?

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?

Four, is the web host reliable and fast? 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? For a starter e-commerce site, an allocation of 1 to 3 GB should be sufficient.

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.