I know these are free webhosts but someone please tell me at least one is reliable? Which one's less likely to chew up my data and spit it out?
My personal opinion would be awardspace, if I am right it is one of the oldest free hosting around. Granted that the features may not be that much compared to the rest, stability wise it is the most stable.
I have a free account with freehostia, and about the only time I've ever really had any problems with it was when the mysql server went down a couple of weeks ago for a short time, but never lost any data as a result. cPanel can be a bit sluggish at times...dunno if that's from being on a secure server or not, but all in all, I'm fairly satisfied with them.
I'm currently hosting my blog http://freeonlinemoneymakinginfo.freehostia.com with freehostia, and they are great for a free host; however, the only downside is you don't get any SMTP mail with the free hosting. Meaning, if you have a contact form or any newsletter scripts they won't work!
Well most free host disable smtp in the server for very good reason as it is one of the most common to be abused especially by spammers. For contact form you can try something like http://www.response-o-matic.com/ Cheers
I used freehostia with my wordpress blog http://www.renanterejolio.com so far no problem i encountered yet.
Yeah, I agree with you there...not having SMTP enabled on free accounts pretty much makes most of the Elephante scripts useless uness you manually enter in usernames/passwords and such for the CMS scripts. But, then again, as wisdomtool stated, it pretty much keeps the abuse of the SMTP servers to a minimum, so I can pretty much live without SMTP for awhile lol. I have seriously considered switching over to a paid plan, I'm just that impressed by them.
Wisdomtool made me go back to my old awardspace account that I never really used. So I added a domain and will see how that goes. Never tried freehostia.
I did find out that with Freehostia, a way you can activate the SMTP is if you: a) host a domain with them, and b) either upgrade to a higher plan OR purchase an addon (you can add say 1GB additional traffic/mo. for $1/mo times however many months left on your account).