If you need to set up a hosted blog service, your best options are WordPress.com and Blogger.com. However if you want to setup a full scale website that requires stuff like forums, guestbooks, photo albums, e-shops, polls, etc. you’ll need a full blown content management system. One particular site that can provide all those features is uCoz, a hosted content management system and website builder.
uCoz is ideal for those who want to create a free web page but don’t have the knowledge/skills or budget to setup a self-hosted website. With uCoz, users have access to a wide variety of modules and full control over the web design programs with the use of HTML templates. For those who aren’t knowledgeable with HTML, there’s a built-in visual HTML editor.
Registration/Installation
Registration is FREE and there’s no installation required as all features, modules and templates are ready to use and implement with only a few clicks. All you need to do is complete the registration process and once you’re done, you can start working and building your website. The user interace is user friendly but it does take
Modules
- Forum (Bulletin Board)
- E-shop
- Site News
- Blog (Web Journal)
- Publisher (Article Catalog)
- File Catalog
- Site Catalog
- Tag Board (Mini Chat)
- Ad Board
- Photo Albums
- Online games
- Web Polls
- Guestbook
- FAQ Service
- E-mail Forms
- Page Editor
- Statistics (Hit Counter)
Screenshots:
uCoz provides FREE unlimited disk space to all its users but if you just newly registered, the initial hosting space is only 400MB. Like Gmail, the disk space and bandwidth gradually increases (every second) so the more and longer you use your account, the more disk space and bandwidth you’ll get. Aside from the modules listed above, uCoz also provides a free domain name (subdomain) and 250 themes or templates as part of the free website design tools. A free subdomain will do, but having your own domain name is better and highly recommended.
Although uCoz is free there are a few issues or cons in the free account – forced ads, no access to PHP, ASP, Perl and other scripts, it is not SEO friendly, it is not open source and accounts are hosted on a shared hosting environment. If you want more features and more disk space, you can avail of their affordable plans which provides users additional features, more disk space and other premium extras.
If you’re looking for a free hosted content management system and website builder, check out uCoz.
