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Everybody signs up - But nobody makes a site!!

If you have a rule like I have where users must upload a site within x ammount of time or they get suspended this may discourage some people. If your having bot trouble i recommend you enable captcha.

Generally 99% of people who have signed up with me have uploaded a site, youll always get the odd one or two who dont however I think if I had automated signups it would be a lot more people who dont upload a site, perhaps the automated signups are part of your problem.

Open a forum and do manual sign ups and manual account creation, your not likely to get so many spam signups that way. Just terminate any unused accounts for now, this is well within your rights as a free host.
 
Is an email reminder of any value?
Back when I did surveys I'd sign up for some 10 services, and invariably forget about 3 of them when it came time to load a page.
 
I kept my free hosting as a private service: anyone had hosting can invite other to register free hosting, and i created for anyone who has sites. Don't have a site, don't have any free hosting.
 
I kept my free hosting as a private service: anyone had hosting can invite other to register free hosting, and i created for anyone who has sites. Don't have a site, don't have any free hosting.

It's a good idea to offer a free host too :D

Thanks. :)
 
In my time I've registered a few free accounts that I ended up not using. Was usually for one of those reasons :

• Mail sending disabled
• Files size and type limits that play havoc on attempted installation of even such mainstream scripts as phpbb, smf, etc... (Fantastico installs and the like usually work around that but then there's still high potential for things screwing up when trying to add languages or mods, or when needing to update the thing later, nevermind storing or restoring a database backup if ever needed)

Either not specified in TOS/FAQs or well-hidden enough that I couldn't know before trying.
If there wasn't a "delete this account" option in the control panel then I just moved after erasing everything as it proved not to be "the" place. Didn't think twice about it as I was pretty sure the host must have either :
1. Some kind of pruning policy,
2. Some interest in claiming a high user count (for resale).
 
This is a well-known problem in human behavior, as my good friend, a professional psychologist told me. People sign up, thinking that an offer for something for nothing will bring them whatever they are really looking for plus a ticket to the Magic Kingdom and the Holy Grail as well. When they don't get it ALL, then they sulk off. Just look at the number of abandoned web mail boxes at hotmail, gmail, and so on. Don't take it personal. It's not about you, it's about them.
 
Ok i'm new to this and this is the first link I clicked. Can someone please explain to me how I can use this 'free' part of the site?
 
you can set to delete the inactivaty account after one week or active the accounts manually.
 
I have the same thing happen to me as well. I bet half of the people signup, say to themselves 'oh I will start working on it tomorrow night'. Then something comes up and they forget about it.
 
Plus, don't forget the fact that there are a lot of "host hoppers" (and competitors sniffing around to see what the competition is up to!) out there!
 
Drifters

Hey guys, combined with the other article-intro thread, what do y'all think about sort of "pseudo-setups" where they are set up in some kind of limbo land that doesn't actually allocate the resources in a locked fashion right on signup? Put in fancy language, they would be "signees" or such. Then only when they actually perform an action that actually requires serious resources, they become "clients".

Then you could change your emotional attitude. Everyone can live in a Capsule Hotel room of Signee Land! Watch them do nothing. Fine by you. (Maybe they even post 1 intro page because they were inspired on day one, same basic deal.)

Then y'all could move into more nuanced discussions like Converting Signees Into Clients.
 
I have quite a few account that is empty and has been deleted. But this is how free web hosting works. When things are free, people will grab whether they are seriously in need of it or not. That human nature. But in all those black sheeps of course they are white sheeps, are some of my users do have interesting site, it a pleasure to see you are able to help them to host their decent sites. My company mentor who is involve in web development for companies covering web hosting to site development, once told me, you are mad to be involve in free web hosting, it nothing but trouble. I always told him, it the passion that run me. I failed in one of my ventures (DanicHost) and it will not stop me from starting another (Hostitele).
 
I am one that has been guilty of this in the past. I would often sign up to see the service, but didnt like the control panel or other 'features' that were neglected to be mentioned in a webhosters post (such as huge ads or popup/unders) Some other things that made me abandon a site was file types not supported, like a .tpl file for the phpbb forum, etc.
 
Sign up to find flaws

I am one that has been guilty of this in the past. I would often sign up to see the service, but didnt like the control panel or other 'features' that were neglected to be mentioned in a webhosters post (such as huge ads or popup/unders) Some other things that made me abandon a site was file types not supported, like a .tpl file for the phpbb forum, etc.

You're right there Sain Cai, so maybe the next part is an easy "resign from host" button so people who do get a grumpy surprise can remove themselves.
 
That would help to an extent I think, as I would have easily clicked a delete button (I do remember a couple hosts did have something like that)

There were also a couple hosts that I had back in 2001-2002 that I mailed asking for deletion. I checked a couple last year as I stored in my FTP client, and were still there :tired2:
 
Most of the persons are doing like window shopping, and also one more factor to be considered here is the cost of creating a site and managing it
 
I know when I was looking for a free site, I signed up with about 10. When it came to upload my site something would fail.. either some restricted file extension or too large a file. It would be better if they clearly specified what restrictions they have ealier on in the process.
 
I am one of those who hops around free hosts and not uploading a site. Here is a list of things that drove me away.

- mail() sending disabled
- mod_rewrite disabled
- .htaccess disabled(mod_rewrite useless without it)
- file extensions not supported (zip, tpl, etc)
- cannot extract compressed package
- can extract but directory owned by 'nobody' so I can't access it (mod_PHPSU?)
- slow, downtime

I settle with zendfree for a while but now zendfree is having trouble so I'm looking again.
 
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