Thread: Free full featured web hosting(w/ PHP+MySQL) + free co.cc domain (w/ DNS service )

This tutorial is about getting a decent, free and full featured web host with PHP and MySQL databases. Once we have the web host we'll create a "co.cc" domain and add it as a add-on domain on the previously created hosting service, thus giving us a place on the web like "gkrellm.co.cc" which is pretty neat and short.

I do know hosting plans these days are pretty cheap but what i am offering is a simple and costless solution of how one could have a forum, blog, portfolio, with the added bonus of a decent domain name.

Whats cool about this web hosting service is that the free plan they have is nearly identical to the paid ones, so we actually get all the good stuff that is available on the paid plan.

Heres some of the most important features of this free hosting plan:

Disk space: 5,5 GB

Monthly Transfer: 200 GB



FTP Access, Online file manager, all file types allowed

addon domains, parked domains,sub-domains: 50 (each)

MySQL databases: 50 (with phpmyadmin access for management)

POP email accounts: Unlimited (with webmail & php sendmail enabled)

Automatic script installation: Fantastico type installer, instant phpBB, SMF forums, etc.

Other important stuff: No Ads, VistaPanel Control Panel, Statistics, and did i mention it was FREE ? :D



1) Goto Signup for free hosting and get yourself an account. You'll receive an e-mail with your account information, all your need for now is the CPanel username and CPanel password so you can login into VistaPanel.

2) Visit byethost.com panel and login with your account. Delete the "bh_" text in the username inputbox and replace it with the CPanel username given in the e-mail. Choose your language and hit login.

Once logged in you immediately get access to all the cool stuff a web hosting plan can give you. VistaPanel is a friendly control panel and so everything u'll ever need will be at plain sight.

At your left you have the general information about your account. It shows you how many MySQL db's you created, the domains you added, disk space, bandwith, etc. Then you also have the account services information: FTP username/host name, Vpanel/e-mail username, MySQL username/host name. Finally you have the Server information which shows the OS the server is running and mysql+php versions.

On the middle of the Control Panel you have all the different Management areas for different types of controls or services. I won't be explaining all of them because Byet hosting have their own video tutorials explaining how to work with vista Panel and the services they provide. To get that kind of help just click on either sub-topic on the "Help & Tutorials" section on the Control Panel, or see all the tutorials on this page Hosting KB - Home.


Now we will create a free co.cc domain. These domains are widely used by lots of people, its fairly short for a free domain so its exactly what we would want. In the next section i'll explain how to create the link between this domain and the web host, so you can upload your files and access them thru example.co.cc/file.extension.

Follow These instructions:

When the domain service is allowed, or even before that, you have to go back to VistaPanel and add the recently created domain to the addon domain list. Example shown in the image below.

Now we are ready to upload files to the host and see them in action thru our new co.cc domain.

To have FTP access we need a ftp client, i personally use the FireFTP plugin for firefox wich is pretty lightweight and does all one should need. Get it at FireFTP - The Free FTP Client for Mozilla Firefox.

Use your account details listed on VistaPanel's left side, and login to the FTP. Once inside, you'll see a root file structure like so:

As you can see once you enter your FTP you get a directory for your newly created domain, inside that directory resides another directory named htdocs, this directory will be the root directory for all your projects that are shown using that domain.

I also have another directory for a 66ghz.com free domain that Byet allows you to use for free, and again this directory has the same htdocs directory inside where i would put all my projects.

If you wanted to buy a .com .net or .org domain elsewhere and bind it to this hosting account you would basically do the same procedure as i showed you for your co.cc domain.

Just for examples sake if you would put an index.html with some basic html inside the example.co.cc/htdocs directory and assuming your domain was allowed, if you would go to example.co.cc/index.html it would render out your index.html page :)

And thats it folks, your very own place on the web :)

I hope this tutorial was helpful to anyone, if so please press the thank you button.

Also sorry for some kicks in the english grammer that may or may not exist along the tutorial.

Sorry for asking this. But isn't co.cc domain commonly used for redirection service?. Great tutorial anyway especially for pointing out great free byethost service.

Sasuke i'm glad you liked it. Yes thats true its mostly used for redirection, but thats because people don't actually have a hosting plan where they can attach addon domains. Still it can be used for both scenarios which is cool, and u can have up to 4 co.cc domains :)

Why would you make it an addon domain instead of parked? Parked domains are meant to substitute for the real domain(whatever.byethost.com). Addon domains are for directing to specific content on your site.

Also, I've had bad experiences with byethost/xtreemhost; I'd recommend ATBHost.net. This site has list of free hosts with info and ratings:
Free Web Hosting - Page 1

There are a few other domain services like co.cc which are good to take advantage of. co.cc is often blocked on certain networks because they could be anything. http://co.tv and http://cz.cc are the same thing

Kanga i appreciate the reply but i really do not relate to your problems...

first of all i've used these 2 services for 2 years and didnt have a single problem with them, also to get the nicest free ATBHost plan you need to post on their forums monthly... byet does not require that and still you get better things out of it.

About the parked/addon domains. yes you're right, but you really don't have to make that distinction if you have only 1 domain to worry about.. if you had 3/4 domains then yeah u should prolly differentiate the domains that point somewhere else and the domains that point at other existing domains.

anyway, what kind of problems you had with byet ? i would like to hear about them, because honestly i didn't have 1 single problem...

ATBhost gives 1GB of diskspace and 10GB of bandwidth, that's more than adequate for a website short of video or mass image hosting, which byethost isn't enough for anyway. My problem with byethost was when I tried using them for image hosting, I couldn't link to the images. It also updated very slowly.

As for co.cc, I became partial to co.tv when I found that co.cc was blocked on my school's and public library's network

Originally Posted by Kanga

ATBhost gives 1GB of diskspace and 10GB of bandwidth, that's more than adequate for a website short of video or mass image hosting, which byethost isn't enough for anyway. My problem with byethost was when I tried using them for image hosting, I couldn't link to the images. It also updated very slowly.

As for co.cc, I became partial to co.tv when I found that co.cc was blocked on my school's and public library's network

Yes, but the problem is that ATB is closed for signups :(

Yikes lol I didn't know that. Well I actually just stumbled upon Free Website Hosting
I can't really say anything about it yet but it looks worth checking out :001_smile:

And to register more than 1 co.cc domain you have to complete a survey

Kanga: websites to hold mass video / image are not to be hosted on some cheezy free plan .. that takes way 2 much bandwith and space to set up on a free plan ..

This tutorial was aiming for a host thats at least 70% decent and that provides you with a costless full featured hosting service... aimed at blogs, forums ... simple stuff, certainly not aimed at bandwith eating monsters D:

If you want to build a website like that u should most definitely think about buying a proper web hosting plan.

About your school and library networks blocking connections to co.cc ... i really don't see a reason for that, either the sysadmin is an idiot or they have something against co.cc's lol .. i personally access co.cc's from my job, my house and at some clients places without a problem .. so works for me i guess... and i hope it works for someone else :)

anyways thanks for posting alternatives for the hosting.