On a sunny day (Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:52:31 -0400) it happened "Martin Riddle" wrote in :
You would probably do well with a shared resource server, there's are
>cheap at $3/month as others pointed out.
>You share server bandwidth with other hosted sites.
>The other option is a dedicated server, that will run more bucks.
>Godaddy has a $4.99/month economy plan which isnt so bad.
>
>Definitely register a domian name. the search engines will eventually
>(after 6 months) index it.
>I would stay away form the free hosting sites, most search engines don?t
>index those.
>As a result you'll wont get as many visitors.
>
>Cheers
I think that is not correct. I once did have such a free website, and google was all over it. If you want your site indexed, just mention it, the link, in Usenet. Few hours later google is there. MSbot is agressive too, especially if you type your site as search.
In fact these day I really have to do special things to for example keep google away from downloading large files from the ftp server over and over again. You cannot have 'robots.txt' on the ftp server, the bot wil not look for it there, but for example you can do (Linux iptables):
-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 20:21 -m iprange --src-range
66.249.64.0-66.249.95.255 -j DROP
-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --sport 20:21 -m iprange --dst-range
66.249.64.0-66.249.95.255 -j DROP
this will kill all of google on port 20 and 21 (ftp).
Bots are more a problem (there seem to hundreds) then a solution these days. On port 80 (http) I only allow google. No other bots, those just eat bandwidth.
You find out when bots start downloading 1GB or more a month, or more then your allowed bandwidth.