It comes with a free website builder that can be used to setup your website quickly and easily.

You get all this free:
*** 1500 MB of disk space
*** 100 GB of data transfer
*** PHP and MySQL support with no restrictions
*** cPanel control panel
*** Website Builder
*** Absolutely no advertising!

here is my portfolio using the webspace I received from lonestar

magician.freeshell.org

it is EXCELLENT!

The only problem is that GAE requires a pretty high level of technical skill to use (you need to be familiar with Python or Java programming). You might find a geeky friend willing to set up your site for you on GAE, but you might have to pay your friend for the service.

If you want to build a blog or something like that, you might look for a free service that targets your need. For instance, Blogger (also owned by Google) is a great free blogging service. It doesn’t require a lot of technical know-how like GAE, but it is limited more or less to blogging.

If you just want a single static page or something, you might see if you can find a geeky friend who might just be willing to host it for you on their site (if they have one). If you don’t have any geeky friends, then you should make some. Because we’re really useful to have around.

Obtaining a domain name is a different story. They cost money to obtain no matter how you cut it. You might be able to get one that’s ad-supported, but you probably won’t be happy with the result. I get my domain names from http://www.omnis.com and pay about 8 bucks a year for each one. That’s about 2 cents a day in case you were counting. So it’s really not a major expense.

Google’s content services (Blogger, App Engine, etc) are very easy to hook into a domain name you’ve purchased. I have had luck hooking both Blogger sites and GAE sites into domains that I purchased through Omnis without any trouble. Google provides very good instructions.

Hope that helps!

If your current internet provider is Earthlink, AOL, SBC Global and others which provide a homepage; you can easily FTP your own webpage designs as a new homepage using DreamWeaver, FrontPage, NotePad, Word, Netscape Composer, etc. And using a redirection service such as mydomain.com or the forwarding of a parked domain name at godaddy.com, you can easily "mask" the homepage URL with a proper domain name. So in a sense, you have a working ecommerce website disguised as a homepage while still paying your normal monthly Internet provider’s access and hosting fee of the homepage.

Good luck!

1- Don’t use free services to set up your website. Free services offer a sub-domain, not a real domain name. This means your site address will be something like http://yoursite.freewebs.com, not http://www.yoursite.com. This way your website doesn’t look professional. On the other hand, there are some limitations with free web hosting services. In a word, if you want to have a serious presence on the web, you must pay for it. I recommend get a reliable company to do that in return for a few dollars.

2- Don’t trust dishonest claims like "Best web hosting only $1 /month" or "Get the cheapest web hosting without sacrificing quality and features!!". Take into consideration that some hosting companies are cheating and lying to their customers. It is very important that your service be uptime (functioning and available for use) . It means you can access your account whenever you want to update your web pages, and users can enter your website whenever they refer to your site address. If your hosting service is not uptime it can be catastrophic!

3- If your website is not a business site (is personal), you can use this cheap, reliable service:
http://www.goldpuma.com

Hope this helped.

They have free hosting plan, but for business, not publicity. So no ads and allow domains etc. It’s like a real service as I would say. Like it very much so check it out.