I know virutally nothing about this kind of thing but want to build a website. I remember Yahoo used to offer a few free pages but it doesn’t seem like they do anymore. Does anyone offer free web-hosting that really is free and somewhat decent?
www.brinkster.com (includes ASP)
If you can cheat through the french signup it doesn’t get much better than www.levillage.org with php and mysql and subdomains and ftp and mmmmmmmm… levillage.org
I have tried a lot of free web based providers, and have never been happy with any of them. It might be worth it to find a cheap web page host and just pay for it. I use Webdisks and they are very good (and really cheap).
General rule of thumb is that if its technically free, you’re going to be paying for it in other ways. Advertising, generally, though of course this varies from no big deal to ridiculous (four popups every time you load a document, say). I’ve often been happy with cheap webhosts (and its very easy to get hosting for a scant few dollars a month), and theres so much competition that you’ll generally be able to get every feature you could want at a rock-bottom price.
I forgot to mention, no ads on the sites I mentioned. Subdomains on the french one, ugly urls on the brinkster one.