Lets say that I wanted to start my own place like GeoCities or Tripod, or something. I know that I need to buy/register a domain, but how do I get it set up to let people register with me?

There is a lot of planning involved in setting up what would seem to be "free" hosting. As you can there really is no money and if any, very little. You would need hosting and a site designed with the ability to take a specfic amount of information. As for auto activation I am unsure as to how you would rig that.

If you're setting up hosting a good place to start is a reseller account. These will ususally give you server space and all the software you need to run the hosting business.

If you really wanted to go it alone in a big way, you would need a server (http://www.rackshack.com - $99/month) and a control panel (Rackshack will add on CPanel for $10-$20/month I think). If you got that server you could certainly put a lot of accounts on (400GB/month data transfer), but I don't ever see how you could get that back from free hosting.

If you really want to do hosting, you will need to charge, and it will take a lot of time, effort and money.

Okay, what about if I wanted to be like one of the sites that will sell a www.blank.com address to you?

You mean a domain registrar. That would only require getting a reseller account from a current Domain Registrar. Though you have to look at what would make you different? How would you get people to know about your company? Or you could spend alot of money and become a direct Registrar(though I don't know the specfics it ain't going to be cheap).

Okay, that just goes to show how stupid I am! I kept looking through to just buy a regular domain, and I kept seeing reseller accounts for sale, and I thought that that meant they were accounts that have already been sold, but then returned, so they were being resold!

Anyways, if I wanted to do that, I'd need want to find out how to make an easy-to-use PageBuilder like GeoCities has...

May I ask you intentions of why you want to offer free hosting? Do you have a way to make it cost effective to yourself(advertising). Remember resources cost money and free hosts give away resources. Good luck with your venture!

Derrick

Hi SmokingTequila,

You could always set up a Muttle co-brand for free (I don't know if they're still up, though). Basically, www.muttle.com will allow you to provide your users with free hosting, under YOUR domain name.

They used to be a pretty reliable host, but they've been having tons of trouble as of late. In any case, you can offer all your users 100 MB space and unmetered transfer, with one default banner ad (although you can add more advertising if you wish to make a profit from this venture). You will need your own domain, however.

You can probably find out more from their website, so I'll just leave it at that: www.muttle.com

Never mind, it seems like Muttle is dead.

Tequila, I highly suggest you learn more about webhosting and domain registration before you even think about creating a company.

You can always setup a virtual ISP from Portland. They are currently redeveloping their system, but I got one setup ok.

Here's a direct link:
http://www.portland.co.uk/visp1.esp