Free Web Hosting Services by Chinese Learning Center

1. To promote 12K and university education, we decided to provide a free hosting services for potential tutors who do not currently have a website.  For more information, please contact us.

2. To promote public access to educational articles on the Internet, we now host, with author's permission, educational articles, papers, essays, dissertations, etc.  For more information, please contact us.

Web Hosting

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is the service provided by an ISP to publish your web pages on the internet. In order for your web pages to be visible on the internet, a web server (hardware and software) must be permanently connected to the internet so that it can send pages to people who request them.

In it's simplest form of sending HTML pages when required, web hosting is not complicated or expensive, but the modern trend is to build more sophisticated web sites with dynamic (automatically changing) content. Dynamic content sites are made possible by web servers able to execute scripting computer languages such as ASP, PHP or PERL. In most cases scripting languages also require access to some form of database to retrieve and store information like catalogue items, user names and passwords and so on.

The role of your ISP is to maintain the web server, keep it secure (protect your site from malicious damage or viruses), keep it online on the internet, and to provide you with technical support and advice and faq pages like this one.

How does one "publish" a web site?

Web sites are "published" (ie made available to the internet) by uploading files to the server.

Most people use HTML authoring software such as Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver to design their web pages on their PCs. Once this design process is completed, the pages must be sent (published) to their web server to be made visible to the internet.

Almost all web authoring software enables one to publish pages by using FTP (file transfer protocol), while Microsoft FrontPage uses a bit simpler but proprietary publishing mechanism. Your web server must be able to support FTP and/or FrontPage Server Extensions to make the publish process easy and transparent for you...in most cases you will simply press a "Publish" button and the software will do the rest. (All of these products have their own faq pages where you can learn more about them)

Naturally your web server will require you to supply a user id and password (supplied by your ISP) before it allows you to publish to the server.

How often can I update my site?

As often as you can provide new content! :-)

There are no limits on how often you can update your site, in fact, it is a good idea to update at least once a month by adding new information, removing old or outdated info and making sure that everything is current.

This will not only improve your search engine position, but it will also ensure that first time visitors are never "turned-off" by old or incorrect information. ("Dead" web sites with old and out of date information is a sure-fire way to loose potential clients)

What is a "web page" and HTML?

A web page is a text file with HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language) commands. HTML "commands" in the file enable you to change fonts, bold, underline, set margins and so on...in other words to format the layout of your page.

In most cases you will never have to work with or understand HTML because most modern web page editor software "hides" HTML completely by presenting you with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface - almost as if you are working in a word processor program.

There are a great many resources on the internet to help you with site design and writing web pages - but the basics are a no-brainer. Given the right software (eg Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver) you will be producing a web page in 5 minutes.

How will people find my web site?

This is the essence of web marketing, and quite an evolved subject. For the sake of brevity we can cover only the basics here - if you need more information, or contact us. 

If you have an established business, you will draw visitors to your site by publishing your web address on your business cards, letterheads and everywhere where you would normally publish contact information.

In addition to this both new and established businesses list their sites with the major search engines (www.google.com, www.yahoo.com, www.altavista.com, www.msn.com, etc) by visiting the engine and filling in a form asking to be "indexed" because while your site is new, people will mainly find your site by searching for keywords on search engines. 

There are several issues involved with getting a good listing on the engines - like selecting the "right" keywords for your site, optimizing your pages so that the search engine software rates them as important, etc. These are not computer technical issues, but they do require careful and creative analysis of what you intend to achieve with your web site and who your target market (or audience) is.

(Your ISP should be able to do this for you or provide help if you need it. At Cozahost we provide articles and e-books to help you understand the process, hands-on direct and practical help to improve your listing and we will list your site on your behalf on the major search engines if requested)

How / where do I find an ISP to host my web site?

You are looking at one. ;-)

Other ways of locating a ISP to host your web pages are by asking your friends / contacts for recommendations, searching for key phrases like "web hosting" on the search engines.

Evaluate the ISP carefully - your internet business depends on their reliability, service and advice. We always recommend that you contact the ISP before you do business with them. If you have to wait a day before they reply to you...

Visit their web site. Is it friendly fast, and, most importantly, does it contain valuable advice and information or is it a SELL-IN-YOUR-FACE knock-off of a glossy magazine page? In other words, do they understand the issues of doing business on the internet? Remember: anyone can be an ISP, but only experienced, reputable companies can help YOU be successful.

Last rule of thumb: Don't go for the cheapest service you can find, unless you believe that it is a good strategy to have a haircut at the cheapest place you can find too. :-) 

Price and value is not the same thing. 

Does it matter where in the world my ISP is located?

Mainly it does not matter, but there are some practical issues you should consider:

Depending on your level of experience with building and maintaining your web site, you may need to be able to telephone your ISP's support department. In this case you need an ISP that is roughly in the same time zone, but preferably in the same country to avoid international telephone costs.

Currency fluctuations and money transfer issues (if you can't use your credit card) may make it difficult or unexpectedly expensive to pay your service provider if they are in a foreign country.

Other than the above issues, there are no technical reasons that would prevent you from selecting an ISP on the other side of the world if you so choose: Even response time is not an issue - for example a Cape Town to Washington transfer would be about 1 or 2 seconds slower than Washington to New York - not a big deal if you are browsing the web.

In some cases you might be forced to host your site in a foreign country to circumvent local laws and regulations. In the United States we have very liberal freedoms of speech and expression enshrined in our constitution.