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eventually open to the public.

Life using the free ISP space was good, but not great. Two drawbacks were that the address was extremely long and my website was hard to find in search engines. This meant others would have difficulty find it, too.

If you don't know if you have free web space from your Internet provider, visit their website or give their technical support a call.

For my third website, I decided to try another free hosting service, Anglefire (www.angelfire.lycos.com/). To say the experience was excellent is an understatement. Everything I needed was provided, including the FTP software. I could create a web site by using their templates or I could use Netscape Composer. I opted for Netscape Composer because I was already familiar with the program. I quickly created a great website and it took only minutes to posted it. Updating the web pages was easy, too.

The only drawback to free hosting services is advertisements are posted to your pages. Sometimes, you have a say in what products are sold, but not always. The only way to eliminate the ads is to pay a small fee to have your website hosted. This usually includes a one-time set up fee (about $10.00 to $15.00) and a monthly service fee (about $5.00).

Because I use this website as my home base for my writing (http://www.thefamilyattic.inf o/Roots.html), I opted to pay $8.95 a month to have an ad-free site and to have my own domain name. The domain name makes the address easier for visitors to type into the browser.

Another great option for genealogy websites is the free hosting service at RootsWeb (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry. com/). Similar to Anglefire, everything is included: Internet space, template pages, assistance with creating webpages, email addresses and FTP software.

I won't say creating a website is easy. It takes a lot of time and effort. You'll make mistakes, but you'll learn a lot in the process. Once you have completed your website, you'll wonder how you ever survived without it.

Initially, my goal was to share information on my family surname with the world, but I also wondered if I could use it to discover others researching the same name. Surprisingly, I've met' several cousins who found my website and together, we shared information and helped each other solve family mysteries. Years after meeting', I am still connected with several of these cousins who I would never have known without my website.

A list of places offering free webspace is found on Free web space (http://www.freewebspace.net/) .

Learn more about this author, Diana Tibert.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

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