Computer Consultant

If you are looking to have a Favicon (icon next to your URL) or music on your blog, you will need to upload the files onto a web host. Most bloggers do not register and pay for a .com site. Fortunately for us, there are many sites offering free hosting of your files, documents, photos, and so on. I shall cover 2 very useful free web hosts which you can consider using – Google Page Creator and Google Groups.

Google Page Creator

You can use your Gmail account to access the available services offered by Google. Google Page Creator is an easy-to-use free tool that lets you create web pages in your browser and publish them to the web with just one click. It works on a what-you-see-is-what-you-get format. Everything is done on the screen and you do not need to download any software. Pretty much like a simpler version of Pagemaker or other web design tools. The pages you create are hosted on Google servers and your own page will be at http://yourname.googlepages.com.

Once you are in it, you will be able to create your webpage – change layout, background color, heading and content font, upload images, and publish.



For our purposes, we would like to focus on uploading of files. Return to the Site Manager. On the right of the screen, you should see this:-



Click the “upload” link, and you will be able to browse your computer for the file that you want to upload.



Once you have uploaded the file, take note of the URL of your file. You may upload as many files as you want, provided that the space for your pages and uploaded files does not exceed 100MB.

Google Groups

Google Groups is a great communication platform for users to get in touch with friends, or people who share similar interests over the internet.



As you can see, creating a Google group is easy. Click the “Create a group” button. You will be brought to a screen which requires to enter your Group's name, and description.



If you have no intention to invite any member at this stage, click “Skip this step”.



You have now created a new Google Group. If you should wish to upload files, click the “Files” link on the right panel, and you can begin uploading. If you are using the files for your blog, see that the Group Settings->Access is configured such that anybody can view the group content.



Every group comes with 100 MB of storage space for all of the group's photos, documents, and files. Take note of the URLs of your uploaded files, if you intend to use the icon for your Favicon, or the music file for your blog.

Other Free Image Hosts and File Hosts

We have also a rather comprehensive list of free Image Hosts and File Hosting Services in our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space. Check out those sites as well and choose one that is fast, reliable and enables hotlinking to the uploaded files.