Freewebs
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| FreeWebs | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Type | Web Hosting |
| Founded | 2001 |
| Founder | Mokhtarzada brothers |
| Headquarters | Silver Spring, Maryland, USA |
| Website | freewebs.com |
| Registration | Required |
Freewebs is a free web hosting company founded in 2001.[1] The company hosts more than 20 million personal and business websites over a variety of topics The chief executive officer is Haroon Mokhtarzada.
Contents |
[edit] History
Freewebs began in 2001, just after the dot-com bubble, as a start-up launched by Haroon and Zeki Mokhtarzada after their last year at the University of Maryland, College Park.[1] Their goal was to make the Internet accessible to anyone and to protect user's rights to free speech.[2] Since then, the success of Freewebs has been growing, as of April 2007, the site counts 18 million unique visitors a month.[1] The company is self-defined as a social media company, and created "social publishing" properties such as Pagii.
[edit] Features
Since April 2007, Freewebs has been developing a widget bank, which made the site more dynamic and contributed to the success of the site.[1][2] In the beginning of 2008, Freewebs released a new page editor including new features such as the possibility to preview one's work before publishing it, photo editing using Picnik and background music. Released in 2008 were Photo Gallery, Video Gallery, and Store.
In addition, members have the option of paying for premium website hosting and domain names.
[edit] Cost
Although the site is titled "Freewebs," the site is not entirely free. Free sites can only hold so much content, and the URL includes freewebs in it; for example a free site named "example" would be "www.freewebs.com/example". Although you could use "www.freewebs.com/example", a more commonly used sub-domain by freewebs users is the ".webs.com". Therefore, "example" could be reached by going to "www.freewebs.com/example" or to "www.example.webs.com". To have a URL such as "www.example.com" a payment must be made which can cost more than $19.99[citation needed] depending on what the buyer decides to buy with the domain.
If you do own a free website, banner ads are automatically placed on it. A free website can only have 20 pages. Advantages of premium usership include unlimited pages, no ads, and much more. The disadvantage is a long process and a yearly pay to freewebs. The user who creates their own HTML without the use of the selection of freewebs templates, will receive a "Floating" freewebs advertisement on the lower portion of their site, unless you select a "sticker" to replace it with.
[edit] Pagii
| Pagii | |
|---|---|
| URL | pagii.com |
| Type of site | Social networking |
| Created by | Freewebs.com |
| Launched | 2007 |
Pagii is a "social publishing network" owned by Freewebs. Pagii provides users with a simple method of creating web content, slide shows, and very simple one page website, all are hosted on Freewebs. Users can use a drag and drop interface various modules to create a dynamic website.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d Hart, Kim. "Venture Capital Drawn to Freewebs", The Washington Post, April 9, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-03-05.
- ^ a b Sandoval, Greg. "The free-speech fundamentals of Freewebs", CNET News, April 26, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-03-05.
