Temporary free server space?

March 6, 2007 4:57 PM

How can I get free web hosting for a few days or a week, just so I can post a message explaining why my web site is gone until I can work out a new permanent server situation?

My brother has been allowing me to mooch of the server he uses for his business. After a dispute with the company hosting his web presence, he's been booted from the server and my page has gone off line. My brother promises I can mooch off him again once he gets new server space set up, but it could be a few days or a week. In the meantime my URL won't load.

I have a few hundred weekly readers, a few dozen daily readers, and I'd like to pull together a temporary web site just explaining what's going on until I can re-establish the full journal on its new server. Is there any way to do this for free or ultra-cheap?

We used to host my web site from home, but after getting hacked rather maliciously I'd rather leave this stuff to professionals.

There are a lot of google hits for this kind of stuff, but I don't know how to evaluate whether any are reputable.

posted by croutonsupafreak to computers & internet (13 comments total)

Why not just use free hosting from WordPress or Blogger? Not too customizable, but easy, quick, and comprehensible.
posted by sindark at 5:03 PM on March 6, 2007

Will they host www.MYURL.com ? I admit it's been about four years since I've used blogger, but it used to be that you had to be WEBSITE.blogger.com or you had to install blogger on your own server (which I don't have right now).
posted by croutonsupafreak at 5:10 PM on March 6, 2007

Who is the registrar? Some (for example, Yahoo Domains) have a feature that allow you to put a simple customizable parking page up.
posted by saraswati at 5:14 PM on March 6, 2007

You could sign up for nearly free speech in the interrim. Not free, but super cheap.
posted by mmcg at 5:14 PM on March 6, 2007

Your registrar may allow you to easily set your domain to URL-forward (redirect) to wherever.whatever.com; you could set up random blogger.com explanation blog, configure your DNS thus, and leave it that way until your proper site is back up.
posted by cortex at 5:14 PM on March 6, 2007

I've dropped you an email (listen on your profile), I'd be happy to do it for free on my hosting machine.
posted by gadha at 5:17 PM on March 6, 2007

I'll second the recommendation for nearlyfreespeech.net. It's fun to get usable server space for a quarter.
posted by Pronoiac at 5:22 PM on March 6, 2007

Although I cannot help with the original question, I will make a suggestion: State a date by which your site will be back and stick to it. You basically get to slip once, and you lose about half of your clientele.
posted by adipocere at 5:41 PM on March 6, 2007

gadha -- I e-mailed you back.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 5:42 PM on March 6, 2007

If for whatever reason, gadha's solution doesn't work out I'll also offer my assistance - I have a few terabytes of bandwidth each month that I never use and would gladly host a Mefi member. :-)
posted by PuGZ at 10:14 PM on March 6, 2007

Have you considered Google Apps?

You can associate it with your domain and let Google handle your hosting. I'll admit I'm not sure how the web pages portion of the services work since I'm using it primarily for email.
posted by JaredSeth at 7:30 AM on March 7, 2007

Thanks everyone. I've taken gadha up on his kind offer, but I also appreciate the additional information I can use in the future in the case of continued difficulties. Much, much appreciated.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 5:51 PM on March 7, 2007

I own a web hosting provider. URL in profile.
posted by drstein at 9:15 PM on March 7, 2007