Starting out with a free forum host or a free website provider is a great way to learn, sharpen your skills, and gain some experience before moving everything over to your own domain and hosting.

 

 

 

So, what was the first free forum hosting provider you ever used? How about your first free website provider?

 

 

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with using free options. Everyone starts somewhere. There’s no shame in building your site on a free platform, especially if you’re learning, enjoying the process, and putting in the work to create something from the ground up. People who start from scratch and figure things out along the way often go further in the long run. Jumping straight into paid hosting or software without any hands-on experience can be a rough ride, especially if you haven’t built up the skills yet.

 

 

So, with that said, what free forum host did you first use? Did you ever try a free website builder? If so, which one?

I used Forumotion for my first forum. I had no clue what I was doing and I picked phpBB3 as my forum type of choice and the ACP confused the heck out of me. It was a Pokemon ROM hacking community and this was at a time where there were only a few tools to make minor edits. I also had no knowledge of the Pokemon games technical wise at the time. :V

The very first one was Bravenet. But literally nobody used it other than me (and I only made two posts on it) - so, it didn't last very long.

 

I then switched to Aimoo - but, even in 2004, that looked very dated, so that only lasted about three months, before I switched to InvisionFree.

Mine was Jcink for pre-hosted, but never used one for self hosted, as they didn't seem worth while.

The very first one was Bravenet

I've tried using Bravenet once. It's running FluxBB, a software that isn't even being supported anymore since the devs moved on to Flarum. They're currently having technical difficulties though so their website is down.

I have never used free forum hosting but I have used a couple of free website hosting. From blogging platform like blogger and wordpress to website builders like weebly, I have used multiple platforms to create free website. That was back in the ways when I did not have a self hosted website. I have also used free domains from freenom (I think the service has been scrapped now) and free website hosting from 000webhost.