WordPress Hosting for Free

As in the best type of free – free as in beer. Worked. Eventually:

First off WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to futer enough, especially with any PHP so that’s out. Then began googling free wordpress host (as you tend to do) and first result chosen was dreamhostapps. No good they only give you a restricted version of the wp-admin interface that prevents you from editing any script.

So I guessed what I really wanted was free cpanel hosting. That usually comes with the excellent fantastico script autoinstaller. 000webhost.com were first up with what I thought was a cpanel host. Actually just another case of false advertising on the web – they give you a restricted own brand control panel that although contains the button for Fantastico, once clicked you are told they are ‘upgrading’ it with no fixed date for go live.

this is gonna take some work, so throwaway email address to hand, I began bumping off every part of the web…

• Well i6networks.com got an immediate fail with attempting to force me into buying a domain to get at my free hosting.
• bluechiphosting.com another short and sweet as they are currently ‘out of stock on this item’.
• toadshosting.com “Sorry free hosting requests are currently unavailable due to general maintenance.”
• hugewire.com got me going with their more thorough entry form – you know, like the more difficult a task is then the more worthwhile it must be? I’m still waiting on their registration confirmation email.
• freecpanel.co.uk 100meg of bandwidth would get used up pretty sharpish
• hosthelpers.com fell asleep reading about the hoops to jump through

2nd page of google.co.uk…

• 0php.com gives quite a comprehensive list of free script hosting. Gave it a shot…
• 110mb.com – either I keep failing the human validation or it’s another dud.
• free-space.net (you might have heard of f-snet.com) tried to get me to sign up to pay per action marketing…
• heliohost.org’s ‘daily signup limit has been exceeded’
• ismywebsite.com relaunching in 20 days…
• x10hosting.com ooh close one, I’ve used them before and these guys do a good job right up until they delete your account for not logging into their forums every 30 days.
• so the 0php list exhausted, back to Googling…
• stonerocket.net wants me to make 10 non-spam posts on their forums (and didn’t tell me until after I registered). Does “frist post!11111111111″ count?
• By this stage the penny dropped – these were resellers offering up a few free accounts (or none at all) on their bargain bucket fly by night cheapo ‘unlimited bandwidth’ accounts with another hosting firm. Undaunted, our hero struggles on regardless…
• funkyvision.co.uk ditto with the stonerocket experience
• freecpanels.com free cpanels! with a paid for account!
• thefreehoster.com I’ve got a billing account setup (why do I need one of those for a free cpanel btw hmm?) just no cpanel account – which ‘will follow separately’…

The last straw came when megabyet.com duly redirected me upon sign up to securesignup.net which when I attempted a login on my new cpanel from their insiduous ‘interface’, redirected me to a site that Opera flagged up as likely to ‘try to induce me to give them my credit card details’. Nice.

And that’s the point I gave up the hunt for a no ads, no hidden fees, no catches wordpress/cpanel host. So I compromised and went for one of those forum activity-metered ones – x10hosting.com gave me close enough. Besides it’s nothing a little automated log-in script couldn’t sort out…