But I have seen people using free domains.

Well, what you have seen are not free domains but are free subdomains. Now, a subdomain is a part of a larger domain. Take the example of this website fazals.ddns.net. Here the root domain is ddns.net which remains the sole property of its owner and is called the top level domain. However, the prefix to the domain, here fazals, defines a subdomain.

Fun Fact: Subdomains could or couldn’t be free, even if they are free, they might have “some restrictions”.

That’s enough answering questions, lets jump on to how you can get one.

There are number of domain name providers that will offer you a free domain name. Yes, domain and not subdomain, but only when you purchase a hosting plan which is quite expensive. Well at least for me.

A few most famous web hosting and domain name providers

• Namecheap
• GoDaddy
• Hostgator

Luckily, there are many free subdomain providers that actually provide subdomain for free. And yes, they have some restrictions, but they can definitely be ignored when compared to what is being provided.

Create a website for free and that too without coding, fascinating right? Check it out.

Free subdomain providers

• No-IP
• FreeDNS
• ClouDNS
  and many more.

I personally prefer using No-IP and FreeDNS as they are a little more versatile and provide fast updates. You can literally use any of them.

No-IP and FreeDNS also provide Dynamic DNS clients so that you will be able to use them of self hosted website whose ip address keeps on changing.

Whats Dynamic DNS and why should I use it?

Have you ever noticed that your ip address on your mobile and broadband network keep changing?
If yes, then your ip address is dynamic, and not static. Imagine you have a dynamic ip address allocated, the one which keeps changing and you are hosting a website. You setup a domain name to point toward that ip address.

For time being, you are able to access the website. Then, your ip address has suddenly changed. You can no longer access your website. You need to manually change the domain-ip mapping. Instead of doing it manually, the Dynamic DNS or the DDNS clients that run either on the router or on any other computer on your network update the domain-ip mapping automatically whenever a change in ip is detected.

So that’s how you get a free domain name. It’s simple, it’s easy and the most economically efficient way of getting a domain name.

Feel free to comment and share. Follow me on social media.

At the end of this article, you should be able to get your website up and running on your local machine, something people call self hosted websites. 

You can also set up a website on a web host for free, but has certain limitations as its free.

Firstly, trust me you need not know HTML, PHP, Javascripts to create a website.

But, I do encourage you to learn html from W3School. If you don’t have a Linux system for this tutorial, you can Install Linux on Windows to get started.We will be creating the website using an open source content management system called Wordpress.

There are a few requirements to start off with a self hosted website.

A linux Operating System

A computer running any linux operating system would work. Ubuntu, Fedora, Cent OS, Debian, even a SBC like a Raspberry PI would work, all you need is the root access to the terminal, and basic knowlege on a few most used linux commands.

Apache HTTP Server

Above all in the bucket list, will be installation of the apache2 server on your linux machine.

But, before running any command in any linux machine its recomended to run the apt update and the apt upgrade commands, just to ensure everything is up to date.

MySQL

MySQL is an OPEN SOURCE database management system. SQL stands for Structured Query Language.

The Installation

Copy paste the commands below in the terminal and you would be good to go.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

This update command updates all the apt package list that contains all the packages, and the upgrade command upgrades the packages.

Next command will install the latest version of Apache httpd server on your linux machine. the “d” in the httpd stands for daemon, meaning that it runs in the background. And thus it has no GUI.

sudo apt install apache2 -y

Next command is used to install all other dependencies for running the website.

sudo apt install php php-mysql mysql-server -y

And if you are doing it in a Raspberry PI, the package mysql-server is discontinued. Hence run the following command.

sudo apt install php php-mysql mariadb-server -y #Only for Raspberry Pi 

At this point all of your dependencies are successfully installed. Next this in to get the wordpress files into the webserver directory.

Change your current working directory to webserver directory, and delete everything inside it.

cd /var/www/html/
sudo rm -r *

The result of the code can be seen by typing

ls

As a result, you will be able to see that the directory is empty.

Download the compressed WordPress file and extract it. A new folder named wordpress will be created. We need to transfer the content of the foldel to the main directory, that is to webserver directory.

sudo wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar xzf latest.tar.gz
sudo mv wordpress/* .
sudo rm -r wordpress latest.tar.gz

Now that the wordpress part is done. We need to create a MySQL database for wordpress to access and save information. But before that we need to make our MySQL installation secure.

Securing MySQL installation

sudo mysql_secure_installation

• You will be asked Enter current password for root (enter for none): — press Enter. (Because the default password is blank)
• Type in Y and press Enter to Set root password?.
• Type in a password at the New password: prompt, and press Enter. 
  Important: remember this root password, as you will need it later to set up WordPress.
• Remove anonymous users?Press Y and click Enter.
• Type in Y to Disallow root login remotely.
• Type in Y to Remove test database and access to it.
• For Reload privilege tables now do the same. Y and Enter.

When complete, you will be able see the message All done! and Thanks for using MariaDB!.

Create a WordPress Database

sudo mysql -uroot -p

Enter the root password you created earlier.

at the MariaDB [(none)]> prompt

create database wordpress;

You must get an output response as :

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YOURPASSWORD';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

This completes your database setup. All you need to do now is to configure wordpress to access the database.

If you have installed the LAMP Stack in your own computer and not any other device, got to http://localhost else you need to type the IP Address of the computer in your URL / Address Bar.

You should be able to see a page like this on your web browser.

Configuring WordPress

Select your language and press Continue

You will be presented with a welcome screen, one like this.

Click on Let’s go! as a result a new page will open up. Now fill out the basic information in that page as follows:

Click on Submit and then Run Installation

Fill out the information: Site title, username, password, e-mail ID and hit Install WordPress

Congrats you are up with your own self hosted WordPress website. Go on, explore it.

Conclusion

WordPress is very customisable. Clicking on the site name in the WordPress banner at the top of the page after logging in will take you to the Dashboard. From there, from there you can change themes, you can add and modify pages, posts, edit menus, play around with plugins and much much more.

Well you just created a free website. Did you use any code? Tell us about your experience in the comment section.

You can also host a website on a web host for free and not on your computer. That’s even more simpler.

Hit the Like button if you found the tutorial to be useful to you. and Share it.