How to get a Free Website and Domain Name

You can spend some bucks registering a domain name, and a few more to have a company host your website, or you can get it all for free. Here's how.

1. Microsoft, of all people, will give you a website and domain name absolutely free. Though aimed at small businesses, anyone can register and set up a website.

2. Step 2

   Head to office.live.com and click on the button that says: Office Live Small Business -- Sign Up for Free.

3. Step 3

   Fill in the simple registration information...it's basically name, city/state/zip, and email. You'll be asked some business questions like "Number of employees". Just answer as best you can, even if the answer is zero, or one.

4. Step 4

   Use the simple form that pops up to register a domain name, and build a website. You can have the whole thing in operation in 15 minutes.

Tips & Warnings

• The free option works with website templates, and there's a limit to how sophisticated you can make the site. Still, there are plenty of options to work with.
• There are tools to add images, tables, slide shows, and so on.
• You also get free email, of course.
• You can add Google Adsense to your site (but it's not that easy...if you run into problems, leave a comment here to let me know, and I'll help you out).
• Yep...you can get more than one site and more than one domain name. As far as I know, there's no limit.
• The Microsoft Office Live Basic sites are ASP based, meaning that they are similar to -- but slightly different -- from pure HTML-based sites. It can be awkward at first, but not too bad. You'll catch on quick enough.