Free Web Hosting
Free web hosting can suit a hobby project, but ads, subdomain addresses and missing support cause problems. Learn how free hosts earn money and what to check.
Knowledgebase
Clear answers to common hosting questions, written by our editors.
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By Maarten Soetens
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Character Sets and Collations
utf8mb4 collation explained: how character sets and collations control stored text, emoji support and sorting in MySQL and MariaDB databases.
By Maarten Soetens
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What Is a Subdomain?
What is a subdomain? It is an extra label placed before a registered domain, such as shop.example.com. Learn how subdomains work and why sites use them.
By Maarten Soetens
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Managed Databases
A managed database is run by a provider for patching, backups, failover and scaling. Learn the pros and cons of DBaaS versus self-managed databases.
By Maarten Soetens
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What Is DMARC?
What is DMARC? It tells receivers how to handle mail that fails SPF or DKIM for your domain, and it can send you reports. Learn its policies and alignment.
By Maarten Soetens
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AI Chatbots for Websites
Learn how an AI chatbot for website support answers visitor questions with a language model and your content, and when it hands off to a person.
By Maarten Soetens
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New gTLDs Explained
What are new gTLDs? Generic extensions such as .shop and .app, added after ICANN opened an application round. Learn why they exist and how they are seen.
By Maarten Soetens
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What Is PaaS?
What is PaaS? Learn how platform as a service runs your application code without server management, what buildpacks and add-ons do, and the trade-offs involved.
By Maarten Soetens
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What Is Total Blocking Time
Total Blocking Time (TBT) measures how long a page is blocked by long tasks in a lab test. Learn how it is calculated and why it stands in for INP.
By Maarten Soetens
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MTA-STS Explained
MTA-STS requires encrypted, verified TLS for mail sent to a domain. Learn how its policy is published, what the modes mean and how TLS-RPT reports failures.
By Maarten Soetens
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IPv4 Exhaustion Explained
IPv4 exhaustion means the pool of new public IPv4 addresses has run out. Learn how NAT, address trading and IPv6 respond, and why IPv4 costs money.
By Maarten Soetens
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LXC vs Docker
LXC vs Docker compared: system containers that behave like a Linux server versus application containers built around one service. See which fits which workload.
By Maarten Soetens