A guide to setting up a website for free with a custom domain

You may have always wanted a website of your own but never been able to bring yourself to paying for hosting and domains. The good news is that if you are just looking to get a basic website going for yourself you can do so without spending any money or compromising on quality.

Free alternatives are perfect for family photo albums or gaming communities and are even suitable for non profit organizations and charities.

The first thing we will look at is getting free website hosting, the process is really simple. All you need to do is apply for a free account from one of the many providers available. My personal favorites include Tumblr, Blogger & Google Sites.

Tumblr & Blogger are both blogging services, Tumblr is very focused on ease of use and has a Twitter feeling to it since you can follow bloggers or be followed and like twitter it is common courtesy to follow back bloggers that have followed your blog. Tumblr has some of the best looking designs and is very easy to use, Blogger is a classic and is focused around easy monetization with everything you need to integrate Adsense or Amazon Ads at your fingertips.

Google Sites is aimed at structured website building and does come across as more complicated then a lot of services available but it is incredibly powerful and can be used to deploy business websites with relative ease.

It is important to use valid contact details when creating your account since they will not tolerate fake contact details in an effort to minimize abuse of their generous offering and they really only need a valid e-mail address you will also receive confirmation e-mails once your account has been successfully configured, it normally only takes a few minutes

There is no shortage of free domain providers either and although this guide looks at using a .tk free domain you can pick any domain your heart desires since they all work the same way. The only requirement is that they support DNS services.

Head over to www.dot.tk and register your free domain, the interface is very simple to use and does not require expert understanding, you do not have to worry about configuring the domain just yet, we will get to that in the sections that follow

Each of the free blog or website examples listed here provide instructions for setting up custom domains, some involve DNS changes while others are a little easier to setup.