A hosting dilemma

[George]

Hi there... I'm tentatively getting into website design, and I've heard a number of people suggest that the best way to start a portfolio of work is to offer sites free-of-charge to charitable organisations in the local area. This seems like a good idea, however I'm not sure how best to approach the issue of website hosting. These would be groups with little or no money to spend, so free hosting would be ideal; on the other hand it rather misses the point if the end result is so full of pop-ups that I can't refer people back to it as an example of my work. With this in mind, I was wondering whether anyone here has found themselves in a similar situation, and how they were able to resolve it? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[zkiller]

i always tried to not get to involved with the hosting side of things. to much of headache and if something goes wrong, the client blames you, while you have no control over what a third party company does.

 

[akropoliss77]

I hope you'll succeed in it.

 

[George]

i always tried to not get to involved with the hosting side of things. to much of headache and if something goes wrong, the client blames you, while you have no control over what a third party company does.

Thanks for the advice... were it a paid assignment I'd likely do as you suggest, or at least make it clear that I couldn't vouch for the reliability of a particular host. Unfortunately the project would be for a client who doesn't have the technical know-how to arrange hosting, and as it's pro bono I rather feel obliged to provide a 'complete' service (after all, it's as much a favour to me as it is to them). Anyway, I'll post an update if I have any sudden flashes of inspiration.

 

[eMonsterhost]

Free hosting is always a good incentive and should work well for what you have. You could always get a few paid customers on your reseller plan to pay for the plan itself.

Best of luck!

 

[bermuda]

Hi, please note that web design portfolio and offering some web hosting accounts for some of your members might turn out to be completely different things.

Web hosting is truly another world and needs study and careful consideration because you always have to check everything to find out about the spendings and the possible popularity of your website in the future.

 

[ian]

if you volunteer to do a better design for non profit sites that already have an existing web presence, then the web hosting is not an issue.