How to Find Free Web Hosting

Cheap free web hosting is hard to come by nowadays, and the hosts that are offering free space and bandwidth hardly offer you any of the support that you need; of course, you get what you pay for, right? Wrong: there is cheap free web hosting available that is both quality and – as long as you know where to look. If you are trying to get a small business of the ground, want to start a new blog, or just want cheap free web hosting to save some money in these tough economic conditions, then read on to learn what companies and features are available for little or no money, and how to find cheap or free web hosting without wasting your time:

1. Step 1

   Start a Blog With Cheap Free Web Hosting
   
   If you are looking to start a new personal journal, or you want to start a business blog to connect consumers to your company on a more intimate level, then you don't have to look too far for cheap free web hosting. There are quite a few free blog websites available that you can use to get started. Blogs are easy to manage, can be easily customized, and only take a few moments to set up. Plus, when you use a cheap, free web hosting company for your blog, visitors can sign up for a free account and leave comments, communicate with other visitors, and you can build a good rapport within the community.
   
   Below are addresses to some of the better free blog sites available on the net where you can get started:
   
   http://www.blogger.com/
   http://www.blogspot.com/
   http://www.wordpress.com/
   http://www.myblogsite.com
   http://www.sosblog.com/
   http://www.livejournal.com/
   http://www.vox.com/

2. Step 2

   Check Out Some Cheap Free Web Hosting Companies
   
   There are a few cheap free web hosting companies available that offer you the services and features you need to get your website started. Cheap free web hosting companies are able to give away a limited amount of their services either by displaying advertisements on your free website, or by earning enough revenue through paid hosting plans to cover the cost without taking a loss. Most offer the same support the paid web hosts offer – including FTP access, CGI support (including PHP and Perl), and a limited few even support MySQL for cheap free web hosting accounts. You can also score your own free sub-domain – yourname.websitename.com – so you can have a personalized domain name to share with friends and family, or an easy-to-remember URL to give to customers.
   
   To get started with cheap free web hosting plans right now, visit some of the addresses listed below to find a free web host that offers the support and features you need, and sign up now:
   
   http://www.homestead.com/
   http://www.freeservers.com/
   http://www.freeonlinehost.com/
   http://www.stormloader.com/
   http://www.webs.com/
   http://angelfire.lycos.com
   http://www.150m.com/
   http://www.t35.com/
   http://www.free-host.com/
   http://www.freewebsitehosting.com/
   
   (Yahoo! Geocities will be defunct as of October 2009, and no longer accepts new sign-ups.)

3. Step 3

   Purchase a Domain With Cheap Free Web Hosting
   
   Some hosting companies are also providing customers with cheap free web hosting plans just for purchasing a domain. Domain names are fairly cheap nowadays, with the average price around $10 (without purchasing a hosting plan or using a discount code). That means for an average of $10, you can have your very own domain name – www.yourcompany.com – along with a small hosting packing from the company you registered through for free. Since the average cost of web hosting is around $5-$10 a month, not including the domain name registration fee, that saves you about $50 to $120 a year. For just $10 a month, you can't find a better cheap free web hosting deal.
   
   Check out some of these free web hosting offers that are included with a domain name registration:
   
   http://www.doteasy.com/
   http://www.godaddy.com/
   http://www.150m.com/free-hosting.html
   http://www.freeservers.com/

Understanding Forex Quotes

Reading Forex quotes is easy although it looks a bit confusing at the beginning.
Quoting Foreign Currency
Currencies are always quoted in pairs. Each pair of currencies thus constitutes an individual product and is traditionally noted XXX/YYY, where YYY is the ISO 4217 international three-letter code of the currency into which the price of one unit of XXX currency is expressed.
The first currency in the quotes act as the 'base currency'.
For example USD/JPY, EUR/GBP, and GBP/AUD, in such cases, USD, Euro Dollar, and Britain Pound are acting as the base currency. Base currency in a Forex quote will always has a value of 1. USD/JPY indicates how much Japanese Yens you can buy with 1 United States Dollar; similarly EUR/GBP indicates the exchange rate of Great Britain Pound with 1 Euro Dollar.

FX Quoting: Bid/Ask and Spread
There are sometimes that you can only see one price but often currency exchange price are display in pairs with 'bid price and ask price'.
For example EUR/USD 1.2385/1.2390, 1.2385 is known as the bidding price, while 1.2390 is the asking price. Bidding price is the price that you sell the base currency (EUR in our case here); asking price is the price that you buy the base currency. The different of the bidding and the asking price is called 'spread'.
You might notice that bidding price is always lower than the asking price. Ever wonder why? The different of the bid-ask price (socall 'spread') is how currency brokers make profits without charging commissions to their clients (sell high and buy low in the same time.)
What's a pip?
A pip is the smallest value in a Forex quote. Take our example earlier on EUR/USD. If the exchange rate goes from 1.2385 to 1.2386; that's one pip. In mathematical definition, a pip means the last decimal place of a quotation.
Note that as each currency has its own value, the value of a pip is different from one another. Say USD/JPY rate at 120.75, a pip would be 0.01 (the second decimal place); while for EUR/USD 1.2385, a pip would be 0.0001 (the fourth decimal place).
Example of Forex Quotes
Confused about the quotes? Don't worry too much about it, you'll get used to them as soon as you move on and start your trades.
For the beginners, here are some quick examples. Try not look at the answer and determine the value of bid price, ask price, spread value, and the pip value.
EUR/USD 1.2385/1.2390
Base currency= Eur
Bid price= 1.2385; Ask price= 1.2390
When selling Euros, 1 Euro = USD$1.2385; when buying Euros, USD$1.2390 = 1 Euro.
Spread = 1.2385 - 1.2390 = 0.0005
Pip value= 0.0001
EUR/JPY 127.95/128.00
Base currency= Eur
Bid price= 127.95; Ask price= 128.00
When selling Euros, 1 Euro = JPY127.95; when buying Euros, JPY128.00 = 1 Euro.
Spread = 127.95 - 128.00 = 0.05
Pip value= 0.01
GBP/USD 1.7400/10
Base currency= GBP
Bid price= 1.7400; Ask price= 1.7410
When selling Pound, 1 Pound = USD$1.7400; when buying Pound, USD$1.7410 = 1 Pound.
Spread = 1.7400 - 1.7410 = 0.001
Pip value= 0.0001
USD/JPY 119.8
Base currency= USD
No bid-ask price is displayed, spread value not available.
Pip value= 0.1

How to Configure HTTPd

HTTPd is the web hosting daemon for Apache. The daemon is run on the web service port (normally number 80) to server web pages to your domain visitors. Apache is a popular solution for hosting PHP web pages, but it also runs on Windows computers. Apache is installed and configured on the host computer through configuration files located on the machine.

1. Step 1

   Download the install executable at apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/win32/. Save this file to your computer to install and archive it.

2. Step 2

   Double-click the executable that you downloaded in Step 1. Click the "Next" button on the Welcome screen.

3. Step 3

   Choose a path to install the files. This path is needed for Section 2 for configuration, so take note of where you install Apache. Click the "Next" button.

4. Step 4

   Verify that the installation was run properly by navigating your browser to http://localhost. An Apache welcome screen should be shown.

Configuration of HTTPd

5. Step 1

   Navigate to the directory where you installed Apache in Section 1. For default installations, this directory is "C:\Program Files\Apache."

6. Step 2

   Navigate to the httpd.conf to edit its content. These files are located in "\apache\htdocs." Apache uses the "/" character instead of the "\" character for folder paths. Edit the line in the httpd.conf file that sets the path for your installation. For instance, if you decided to install Apache in "C:\myapache," then edit the source line to be the following:
   

7. Step 3

   Configure the access. At approximately line 347, access is set for the web service. The line is set by default from the installation to read as follows:
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
   The following line only allows access from a specific IP address:
   Order deny,allow
   Deny from all
   Allow from 192.168.0.2

8. Step 4

   Close the httpd.conf file. Click the Windows "Start" button and select "Run." Type "cmd" in the textbox and press "Enter." This opens the command prompt.

9. Step 5

   Type "net stop Apache" at the command prompt. When Apache stops, type "net start Apache." This starts the service again. Restarting Apache is needed for the changes to take effect.