You know what ? I'm happy !
Some of you think that it's normal to have their wesite hosted at Astahost since a long time, it seems normal. But it's not so obvious.
A lot of free webservers were flying around here, who remembers them ?
And a lot of them are already dead, just try to connect again :

MY10GB.COM
1MAJORHOST.COM
KINGOFHOSTS.COM
1GB.CC
CTRLALTHOST.COM
FR33HOST.NET
HOZTIX.COM
9999mb.com
4thost.us.to
They were promissing a lot of things, and they are gone, they simply could not survive.
Big up, Asta !

I guess I am just that lucky. I was looking for a change when I was looking for a new web host. I was SOOOOO tired of using my geocities, that anything would be better, I was at least hoping. So I was researching a lot online and then I was able to come across Astahost and a few others. And I am very glad I came upon this one first. I was pretty shady about using forums, but I liked how maintained everything was.

That is quite the listing. I would think it would be longer, but I bet that is what you have dealt with. I think there are so many that are trying to compete, but don't have the passion for what they are trying to offer. I think the owners and creators of Astahost had an idea and handled with very well. And that was quite an impressive ideal... Webhosting with forum sharing, and I am sure it's not as easy as it sounds to maintain. Good job to all involved!

- skedad -

(Oh, and if I can think of any more sites, I will post them!)

The same principal applies around the web, and even outside. Many businesses proudly announce in business since 1999 or whenever. For a commercial enterprise, continued existence means that they are providing a service for which there is a continuing demand. On the web, particularly with open-source software, the folks who have been around a long time are not only providing something for which there is demand, they are providing something that is good!

Just today, I ran into an "old friend." It is Arachnophilia, a Web page development workshop and general programming tool. I used a much earlier version of it on a PC nearly a decade ago. Now it is in Java, so that it will run on Windows, Macs, Linux, open-architecture cell phones(?), and anything else that will host Java 1.5. Arachnophilia is something different from pure freeware. It is Careware. I encourage you to click on that link. It is a bit Americocentric, but the concept is ageless!

After I have refamiliarized myself with Arach (as its friends call it), I will write a review. But for now, I suggest you click on the main link above, and just look at that page, and others reached from it. They provide an excellent introduction to really good web page design. As another example, look at the Freeware page. Note the pull-down list at the bottom of the page. Arach does naturally, many very nice things that you seldom see on the web.

I'm glad to see those go down lol. I had used so many horrible 'free' web hosts in the past prior to making asta my home that frankly I was disheartened greatly by the state of things. Asta is a breath of fresh air but really as long as the others are around alot of people wont know what possibilities are out there. Hopefully more of the horrible examples of free hosting follow suit and disappear allowing the much more rare professional quality ones to take over and maybe even one day become the norm.

Yeah, most of those usually go down, but it depends on the people who created those kind of websites, free hosts.. some people get a server from a friend or something like that for free, so they think to start offering free webspace service, after some time the server goes down or changes something and he also goes down, he never even thought to pay for a server himself, or similar things, sometime it is due to unprofessional people, who don't know anything about server configuration...

But yeah, usually it is due to the bills they get for the server, they can't upkeep or see that it is worthless and doesn't bring any income and offering less resources, like only one mysql database, turning off awstats to save some memory.. clients can choose another host, there are full of webhost out there Nevertheless, sometimes offering more than you can handle can work, due to usually not all clients use all the mysql databases you give, they don't use all the bandwidth, all the space they get and etc. I wonder, what would happen, if all gmail accounts would suddenly fill up with all the space they have, for example I only use ~100MB of my given 6GB in GMail and there are lots like me, hahahaha

I can also agree that Astahost and the whole Xisto network has outlasted EVERY single host I have ever been with so, good job Xisto, and hopefully, it continues to expand. Giving both free and paid hosting with excellent quality.


xboxrulz

Well, I think most of these webhosts were not really what you would call "professional". They were probably just created by some person who decided (randomly) one day that they were going to create a web hosting company. Perhaps they thought that it would loop in a lot of money and decided to try it out. Then, after a few months or years of working on it, they might give up either because they run out of money or they run out of determination. Obviously, it's often hard to tell if some random host you've found on the Internet is "unprofessional" and liable to go down quickly, so really leaves a lot of people in huge messes. And incidentally, good things usually have been around a long time, either that, or if an outsider who is closely tied to the industry has recommended it, it's probably trustworthy.

Interestingly enough, none of the free hosts I've been to are actually down yet; I was always the one who took the initiative to leave them when the going went bad. But then again, my list of free hosts were the cookie cutter FreeWebs, 50webs, Byethost etc. Astahost so far has been great. How long have they been providing their service again? For me it has lasted and been very convenient.

This post has been edited by Arbitrary: Jan 27 2008, 07:51 AM

I only remember one free webhost that went down and that was only because they stopped providing free hosting (payed hosting was still available). It was a real shame actualy that they stopped, it had everything astahost provided even without credits .
Can't remember the name tough .

Maybe it's not a shame, maybe it's simply normal. I would like to know how to offer things for free, probably need to be very rich or to have a big source of revenue.

I do not remember any previous hosts that I used that closed down. However, I had a very bad experiance with two. My first, freehostia, was OK for a while but then excessive downtime irritated me. Then the next, Core-Fusion. The first blow with it was not being able to make subdomains despite is saying I could. That was fixed. Next problem was they switched their service to work differently. Originally they gave you hosting points based on how long your post was, then they changed it to how many posts you made. The final blow was them now switching me over to a different page giving me numerous unfilled promises.

Interestingly, a site that's owner hadn't posted on their forums for many months is still running.