This question is indeed a very simple question with a simple answer. Astahost indefinitely. Now, I have tried many of the above listed hosts:

Geocities -- It was my friends who recommended I try this, so I did. At first, I didn't think the ads were that bad, mainly because I thought that since I was getting a service for free, a couple of ads were okay. But as time went on, I started getting annoyed, so I ended up changing, again because of recommendations from friends.

Freewebs -- This time my friends pushed me to Freewebs, and I truly thought they had no ads. I started working on my site--their features weren't horrible (at the time), they, after all, had a text editor. Then I started uploading images and the horror began. You could only upload one image at a time, the Multiple File Uploader apparently cose money. Then, after trying so hard to upload plenty of images, I found out there was a file size limit! That really got on my nerves, and I started Googling for new sites.

biz.ly -- I Googled and got co.nr, which told me they didn't offer hosting services and recommended me to biz.ly. They horrible thing about biz.ly--they only offered 20MB of space! Eventually I blew that ground rule and decided I needed a new host.

50webs.com -- They weren't quite that bad, though it's true that they lack a page editor. (But I didn't really worry back then because I rarely used the page editors. I just wished 50webs had a file overwrite button so I didn't have to delete everything and then upload). The thing that really bugged me about 50webs was the fact that they had no support for PHP. I badly needed to move. (Well, I do have a site there still hosted that uses no PHP...of which 50webs is suitable for that site...)

And finally, Astahost...

I have to say, it's great. I really like the html editor (Yes, I have realized the glory of it), the PHP support, the HUGE amount of space, and finally, no ads! I've also experimented with other PHP hosts (haven't actually hosted with them) like AwardSpace and a couple of others, but AwardSpace lacked support for the mail() function in PHP and this other site that said they offered PHP support actually did not.

This post has been edited by Arbitrary: Jul 10 2006, 05:52 AM

Yes, definetely Asta Host. Asta Host has given me all I want and all it needs is participation in the forums. I like sites which you have to post. www.hostingspace.org my former provider went down and I still need time to settle down here, but I think my website has a bright future with AstaHost.

~souradipm

Ive just joined up with asta after reading about it on a nz pc support forum. It looks almost too good to be true but I guess I have to wait and see. I have two personal websites hosted by my brother, but I choose not to use them for file hosting because of bandwidth usage.
How do free things like asta support themselves? Someone has to pay..?

I've only tried freewebs. It is good for those who have no html knowledge but still willing to have a website. Grrr...but those ads are annoying and if you take the website thing seriously, you definitely shouldnt go there.
However, it is obvious that astahost is the best one among all others at the moment.
And, the best thing about asta is that I can actually view the sites. Since we moved and most of the free-hosting sites never show up on my computer it got really hard to find the right host.
In other words - ASTAHOST RULES!

Freewebs is cool but they don't offer enough control over the site
Geocities has too many adds
all the others i havnt even heard of.
I like this site the most so far.

I haven't try Astahost yet... May be I'll try it later...

Still waiting for the right amount of credits. How do free hosts survive?

It really depends on the host, but most of them "survive" by placing ads on your web site. When something is free, everyone wants it, so they have numerous pages with AdSense on them. Unfortunately, those host don't live for a long time.

Astahost is different. You don't get ads on your web site, but are required to post here. Why? Because each and every post increases the forum size and its page count. And on every page there are let's say 3 ads. Also, the content is high quality, so the links in the ads will also be. A perfect tactic to get money.

However, ads are not enough to support all the users, so OpaQue uses money that he gets from ComputingHost.com, a paid host that he owns, in order to finance Astahost. Without him, we would probably be using Geocities right now So, if you are to switch to a paid host, make it Computing Host and help the community survive

True true. My brother hosts two sites i own but he doesn't give me much bandwidth

astahost rulezzz

maybe also byethost