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Free Hosting with Godaddy Domain Purchase

February 12, 2006 by debbie T | Internet • Web Development

Since hearing about Godaddy’s deal to include free (ad-supported) web space with every purchased domain name, I was curious.

So, tonight I registered a new domain after I found a coupon for $6.95 domains at http://www.couponcraze.com/coupons/godaddy/

It only cost $7.20, after the ICANN fee, so I figured I couldn’t lose.

For web newbies, it could be confusing to find the details of how to get your free hosting space (it isn’t set up automatically,) but their help page should explain the procedure.

I was offered a choice of Linux or Windows servers. (I chose Linux.) They also offer PHP support, but I am not sure if there are limits to use only their pre-approved scripts.

I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of space they were giving away. 5 GB (5,000 MB) of file space and 250 GB (250,000 MB) of bandwidth (data transfer). This seems almost too good to be true, and I am not sure how they would feel if someone was using all that bandwidth to host a popular podcast. Would they be shut off even if they stayed within the limits? I noticed in their terms of service that the user is responsible for excessive overloading and that the site could be shut down (temporarily or permanently) if the load threatens the stability of its network.

If You are hosting Your web site on Go Daddy’s servers, You are responsible for ensuring that there is no excessive overloading on Go Daddy’s DNS or servers. In the event that You exceed Your allotted bandwidth and thereby overload Go Daddy ‘s DNS or servers, You shall be assessed any and all fees, costs and penalties associated with such overloading. You may not use Go Daddy ‘s servers and Your web site as a source, intermediary, reply to address, or destination address for mail bombs, Internet packet flooding, packet corruption, denial of service, or other abusive activities. Server hacking or other perpetration of security breaches is prohibited and Go Daddy reserves the right to remove sites that contain information about hacking or links to such information. Use of your web site as an anonymous gateway is prohibited. Go Daddy prohibits the use of software or scripts run on its servers that cause the server to load beyond a reasonable level, as determined by Go Daddy . You agree that Go Daddy reserves the right to remove Your web site temporarily or permanently from its hosting servers if Go Daddy is the recipient of activities that threaten the stability of its network. Further, if You are using ad-supported hosting, You acknowledge and agree that Go Daddy has the right to terminate Your Services in its sole discretion and for any reason, including, but not limited to, Your failure or unwillingness to comply with the terms and limitations of this Agreement, specifically, the content and material restrictions set forth in this Agreement.

Initially, after signing up, I was informed it could take 24 hours for the account to become active, but in less than a half hour, my account was up. Pretty good, Godaddy!

I received a Welcome email explaining my FTP information, and I quickly signed on and uploaded a index.html page. I was dying to check out the source code for validation purposes.

Eeek, validation is not possible with their added advertising coding; just like GeoCities, Godaddy adds a line of closing tags at the end of the </html> tag and before their javaScript.

</object></layer></span></div></table></body></html>

Perhaps missing tags in the users coding can alter the advertising placement, so they must insure that all important block-level tags are closed. Truthfully, the added code isn’t too obtrusive; Tripod and some other free hosts are much worse.

I think this is a perfect way to get started with a web site. Since you retain ownership of your domain name, you can move it to a new host at anytime, and never lose your web site address. This wouldn’t be possible with other free accounts like GeoCities, Tripod, or FreeWebs. Oh, and to be honest, I wouldn’t normally recommend GoDaddy as a “pay” hosting provider. Once you are ready to pay for hosting, browse the forums at http://www.webhostingtalk.com and you will find lots of good hosting choices.

If you want to check out my new site, visit disdatmac.com. I will be keeping the domain there for some time, while I test their hosting.

Permalink | Comments (68)

There are 68 comments

I renewed several domains and I was interested in taking advantage of this service. I use an iBook G4 with OSX Tiger. Are you running Linux on your Mac? If at all possible, how would OSX users update their webpages?
Comment by andbrainstoo on May 28th, 2006
You don’t need to be running linux or a web server on your mac. You would just need ftp software to update the web files.
Comment by debbieT on May 28th, 2006
I wonder if they would allow you to block the ads with a CSS rule, or if they nuke accounts for that.

Their TOS says “You further acknowledge and agree that as adequate consideration for Go Daddy providing You with the Services at no cost to You, Go Daddy shall have the right to place certain advertisements on Your web site.”

Well, if you block it with a CSS rule you’re not really breaking the TOS in the technical sense because they are placing the ads there. The ads are still loading, still consuming bandwidth and still displaying– in browsers with CSS styles turned off, or mobile devices or legacy browsers that don’t support CSS. Additionally, text-to-speech programs might still read the ads.

Of course, they might not see it that way! I’m just curious if anyone has had any experience either way.

Incidentally, to block the ads, add this line to the CSS stylesheet:

iframe display:none !important
Comment by fissionchips on July 13th, 2006
Er, sorry, the correct CSS line is:

iframe {display:none;!important}
Comment by fissionchips on July 13th, 2006
Two comments about your comment

I would be afraid that the search engines would penalize you for hiding text/code. They don’t like that, and will ban you if they find out that you are hiding something like that.

Second, the ad code that Godaddy added is located in a javaScript file. I don’t see any iframe tags. I don’t know if hiding it with css would even work.

Hiding iframes would also hide some Amazon or other affiliate ads as well.

Good try though, Fissionchips!
Comment by debbieT on July 15th, 2006
Well to say the least I have tried the code and it is working at the moment. I dont know if godaddy has some way of seeing whether or not this is being done so I havent decided how long I will keep the code up. But right now it works, so good job.
Comment by Madison on September 19th, 2006
yeah works deliciously…im tempted to use it as i can’t upgrade my account for 24 months yet, have to upgrade it by month till april…..sigh

godaddy is fast but their site and rules are mighty confusing.
Comment by melksnor on September 29th, 2006
you guys rock :] the code worked for me also.
i hope there wouldnt be any problem :]
thanks a lot
Comment by gokhanaktug on December 6th, 2006
Dude,

You are my IT super hero! I can’t wait to show my fellow IT brothers what you have come across.

Kudos to you my friend!

I wonder how long it will take till they figure it out?
Comment by kg on December 12th, 2006
haha great! I must show that to my friend
Comment by Rob on December 19th, 2006
thanx fot this
Comment by Enver on January 23rd, 2007
hey guys uh with that css thing where exactly do i type that into my microsoft frontpage?
Comment by John on February 7th, 2007
Nvm i figured it out, I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by John on February 7th, 2007
LOL!!! Works perfect.
Comment by Jeff on February 23rd, 2007
Interesting! Thanks for posting, Roman!
Comment by debbieT on March 24th, 2007
The site looks great ! Thanks for all your help ( past, present and future !)
Comment by morganusvitus on April 5th, 2007
At the very end of the document put:

The XMP tag will stop the HTML after it being parsed and display it “as is” but the CSS hides it. It’s the best because the Javascript doesnt even get executed.
Comment by Blue on June 18th, 2007
From above post:

< XMP STYLE=”display:none” >

(close up the tag)
Comment by Blue on June 18th, 2007
THE ABOVE CODE WILL HIDE THE ADS COMPLETELY
Comment by Blue on June 18th, 2007
can someone repost the xml hide script? I can’t get it to work (or the css hide)

Thanks!
Comment by James on July 5th, 2007
AT THE VERY END OF THE DOCUMENT PUT <XMP STYLE=”DISPLAY:NONE”>
Comment by Blue on July 7th, 2007
Whats the difference between the iframe hiding and the XMP method?

I wanted to run adsense on my free hosting and the iframe hid them as well so I put a negative vertical position to my whole page and it goes up over them.
Comment by Otto on July 8th, 2007
The XMP Tag stops the HTML after is being parsed. Its the best option because it wont hide other IFRAMEs just the adverts.. as long as you put it right at the end.
Comment by Blue on July 9th, 2007
Thats slick, thanks Blue!
Comment by Otto on July 10th, 2007
I tried and tried your suggestions. I am not sure in what document you are referring. The bottome of the style.css? the index.html? I couldnt get this to work.
Thanks
Comment by Nickie on July 10th, 2007
Nickie, I believe it should be inserted at the end of the html document.
Comment by debbieT on July 10th, 2007
Also, the Javascript doesn’t get parsed
Comment by Blue on July 12th, 2007
^^ Godaddys ad javascript ^^
Comment by Blue on July 12th, 2007
How do I remove this from appearing?

object layer span div table body html!– adsok — script language=’javascript’ src=’https://a12.alphagodaddy.com/hosting_ads/gd01.js’ script

After I inserted to XMP code this displays at the bottom
Comment by Patrick on July 19th, 2007
add

height=0 and width=0 to the iframe code inside the carrots and we are in business!
Comment by Patrick on July 19th, 2007
Where does the height and width settings go into the XMP line?
Comment by Rich on July 28th, 2007
hey same problem can any one help me how to remove the code after inserting ther XMP line
Comment by ant on August 12th, 2007
please reply soon
Comment by ant on August 12th, 2007
I just added right before the XMP line and it turned the code black (which is the color of my background). It’s dirty, but it works.
Comment by Cybercat on August 28th, 2007
span style=”color: rgb(0, 0, 0);”

between carats
Comment by Cybercat on August 28th, 2007
I found this on another site and it appears to work great on my webpages. Hopefully it will help a few of you also.
Comment by Severe on September 5th, 2007
I should have forseen that happening…

XMP style=”display:none”
xml
TEXTAREA style=”display:none”
PLAINTEXT style=”display:none”
object style=”display:none”
IFRAME style=”display:none”
comment
APPLET style=”display:none”
NOFRAMES>” before and after each line.
Comment by Severe on September 5th, 2007
Here is the coding that Severe emailed to me:

<XMP style="display:none">

<xml>

<TEXTAREA style="display:none">

<PLAINTEXT style="display:none">

<object style="display:none">

<IFRAME style="display:none">

<comment>

<APPLET style="display:none">

<NOFRAMES><SCRIPT><noscript>

</html>

</xml>

I have not used this, so I have no idea if it works, and be aware that you are probably going against GoDaddy’s terms of use. Use at your own risk!
Comment by debbieT on September 11th, 2007
If you want to use godaddy.com free hosting, but don’t want the add. All you have to do is add <.noscript> (without the . )at the very end of your page code. =)
Comment by Casey on September 19th, 2007
Thanks Casey…it works!!!
Comment by eliza on January 19th, 2008
I don’t know why everyone here is so determined to try and get the ads off their site.

GoDaddy is offering you FREE HOSTING, and the only way that they actually make any money from giving you free hosting is from the ads on your site.

Here’s an idea, if you don’t want the ads to appear on your site, why don’t you actually pay for your hosting then you can do what you want.
Comment by john on January 31st, 2008
john, i tried so hard to “upgrade” my service to not include ads. I would prefer doing this legitimately, I really would. I simply could not figure up where to go to do this. I finally gave up. GoDaddy site is simply too complicated and too busy-on-the-eyes for my taste. Honestly, this solution is so much easier for me.

john, where can I go to upgrade my account?
Comment by joe on February 17th, 2008
Joe, if you sign into your godaddy account. Click the check box next to your domain name, and off to the right side there is a link to “upgrade/downgrade”

click that, and then choose the plan you want.
Comment by debbieT on February 17th, 2008
Thanks, the patch works wonderfully. I use Joomla to develop my site and this godaddy banner is making me cracy in the frontend as well as the backend. Now it is all gone.
Comment by iam0101 on February 21st, 2008
Casey WINS with the single line of noscript code.
it blocks the GD ads but still shows your own adsense if u want
Comment by freakbrother on March 17th, 2008
The worst website hosting is Godaddy. Their hosting services are the complete opposite of their registrar services. They have very unusual restrictions in plans (like a limit of 1000 e-mails sent per day in a DEDICATED SERVER, lol). These restrictions are hidden in it’s “sales technics”. The support is very slow, take more than 24 hours to answer questions. No guarantee, no refundable, no respect, no shame to provice a deficient service. They win money with it’s hosting services lying to customers. It’s probabbly an outsourced service. Terrible. Go to “Host for web”, “Galaxy” etc. I lost USD 140 with them. Terrible. Flee from its host services!!
Comment by Francisco L on April 30th, 2008
to block ads simply put “<scipt” at the end of your document, worked for me.
Comment by art on May 24th, 2008
thanks for the <.noscript> code, it works!
Comment by Rustman on June 9th, 2008
i like this one:

body > iframe {
display: none !important;
}
Comment by thewebguy on August 26th, 2008
<.noscript> code works fine. Godaddy has served me well for years, admittedly their UI is slow and not very intuitive. Lately I find there responsetime has slowed considerablely as well. Maybe twme to look for something else.
Comment by Jobannoncer on October 20th, 2008
Hi guys,
I really don’t understand where I have to add …..in which document?
Maybe I have to add it at the end of the index.html file with bbedit?
Thanks a lot
Comment by John on October 27th, 2008
Hi guys, I really don’t understand where I have to add <.noscript> code…..in which document? Maybe I have to add it at the end of the index.html file with bbedit? Thanks a lot
Comment by John on October 27th, 2008
aaaaaaaa I’ve got it!!!! Thanks a lot!!!

The only thing…I have a counter shinystat on my index…why it doesn’t works? How can i do?
Comment by John on October 27th, 2008
I used the info from post 40, it works fine. Thanks!
Comment by ejly on November 9th, 2008
Apperantly, a full frames page will also hide the ad for that page. I have used a frames page (much to some disappointment in results) to load pages I host on googlepages. The idea was to have the ad on the main page, with my header banner and links pages not have the ads so I can make a dynamic page. Well, I can’t get the links to load from the left frame into the right frame, they open in a new tab. That pretty much kills the idea for me, plus I feel dishonest for not having any GodAddy ads on the page at all.

If you think you can get the links to work cross-domain, then this might be a good bit for you. Myself, well… back to the drawing board. And a side note, I will be moving my site to a pay-host as soon as I have funds, but in the mean time I want to get it built in a manor that I can pretty much just copy the files to the new host and I’m done – without having a bunch of partial gd ads in my subframes :S
Comment by AeSix on November 25th, 2008
I wrote a script that loops through the DOM and finds all of the element id’s that are not mine. The parent element id for the godaddy ad is conash3D0. Add the following to your css file and include the css file on all pages that you don’t want to see the ad on.

conash3D0

{
display:none;
}

With ALL of the methods posted above you loose some form of functionality (i.e. hiding iframes is no good if you’re using iframes or adding the noscript tag will still show the add for browsers with javascript disabled, etc.). And just to pick a bone with Godaddy, the sign-up process did not make it clear that there would be ‘advertising’ on my site. I didn’t find out until I had uploaded and viewed my first page. I’m sure it was there in the fine print but had I of known, I would have gone elsewhere….

Enjoy the script
Comment by zerocool on January 6th, 2009
The css above did not come thru correctly. Let’s see if this works. Try

.#conash3D0 { display:none; }

without the period before the number sign.
Comment by zerocool on January 6th, 2009
thanks Casey it worked perfectly!!
Comment by peter on February 8th, 2009
why did you say “I wouldn’t normally recommend GoDaddy as a “pay” hosting provider”?
I use it as a pay hosting and I like it.
Comment by Peter on February 20th, 2009
Hey Peter, I know some GD hosting customers that are perfectly happy with them as well. I just don’t think they are as “advanced” as I would like.

I know they don’t offer secure shell access, so SFTP is out; that is a big one with me.

I have heard conflicting reports on their customer service. Some have had no problems, but some have said it’s very difficult to get help.

I find their account control panel to be unbearable. That is another big one for me, since I tinker in my control panel on a regular basis.

But don’t let my opinion affect you. If you are happy, then that is all that matters.
Comment by debbie T on February 22nd, 2009
hi. i tried adding the code, in the source section in GoLive. It doesnt seem to work for me…
any suggestions??

thank you!
Comment by Jg on March 20th, 2009
Hi debbie,
I wonder if I can only use the free hosting under a sub-domain?
If so, I may use it as a file service for my blog. They won’t add tails after a non-HTML file, do they?
Comment by dong on March 30th, 2009
Hi
Anyway to remove using iweb 09? I’ve uploaded my site to godaddy free and the ads have completely destroyed my wufoo form and bannerzest banner
why has this happened thought banner would only be at top of page?
Comment by dangerousdave on June 7th, 2009
To Dong and Dave, you guys could always try buying a hosting plan. Then you won’t have to worry about the ads.

It’s only $5 a month.
Comment by debbie T on June 7th, 2009
Good post! Will try later. I hate Godaddy’s AD even though my web is personal blog!
Comment by james on June 13th, 2009
Great Job. This code worked.
Comment by Atikson on February 21st, 2010
Hi guys,
In which file does one place the code?

Cheers,
M
Comment by M on May 13th, 2010
The code should go to a master CSS file if you have one in your site, or CSS section of your HTML page file.

By the way, this banner code that godaddy add to the free web page “break” the administration page of WordPress, both CSS (chrome and firefox) and Javascript (IE, chrome, Firefox) and render WordPress administration virtually impossible. There is a discussion of fix below which involves the hacking of WordPress’ Core code.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/280162

and, thanks to these additional closing HTML tags that the banner code adds to end of the page, the site will not pass W3C validation test.

I guess that’s the price of using “free site”
Comment by masakiA on May 15th, 2010