I'm still building my FREE BraveHost site (Thank you for the webspace). Unfortunately, FREE is the only price I can afford currently. :)

My question is --
What is the features list for a FREE Bravehost site?
What programming resources are available on a FREE BraveHost account? HTML, JavaScript... what else?

Clarification --
I'm not asking about free tools to add to my site.
I'm talking languages. I'm creating an HTML/JS site, but I think I need a scripting language like Perl/Python/PHP.
I saw that the FREE BraveHost account can create databases. So what web language can be used to create queries for the database on a FREE BraveHost account on a web page... PHP?
Also, I tried a phphinfo(), but I get no response back from the host.

Please, point me to the account plan breakdown.
Thank you,

Barry

Browser: IE / Firefox / Chrome

OS: Windows XP

If you look at the hosting matrix, it may answer most of your questions. You will probably save some time by scrolling down and starting with the permitted filetypes list.

You don't get those things for Free

you need to upgrade to paid hosting


With the free hosting you only have 5mb of space allotted to you so if you want a deep website and more better look to UPGRADING and purchasing your own domain perhaps


Not much you can have here for FREE and even all programming features you want are NOT AVAILABLE for free hosting/free bravehost subdomain

I finally found the breakdown of plans and features, the hosting matrix that was mentioned, at http://www.bravenet.com/global/hosting_matrix.php .

Also, as I have seen in other posts, I have figured ways to do what I wanted access to PHP to do in JS. Still hoping that one of the methods (array vs hash vs linked list object) will support the 274k of characters that I want to process.

As was pointed out, FREE accounts do not have access to MySQL (as I thought I saw) or scripting... as the page before the matrix... at http://www.bravenet.com/webhosting/hosting.php had led me to believe.

All-in-all, this confusion that I had with features has not dissuaded me from being happy with my site at Bravehost. I will continue to use my FREE site here, as I keep finding workarounds that flourish among what I initially thought were limitations.

Peace.

Browser: Chrome & IE & FF

OS: XP

It is most unusual to get MySQL or PHP in a free package.

>It is most unusual to get MySQL or PHP in a free package.

Not completely true...

I set up a site at Bravehost because I used to use Braveweb tools on my localhost (non-internet connected) IIS server... back when I first learning HTML. I actually made my Windows XP wallpaper a local HTML document... back in the days when I tried things just to show that they could be done. I used some of the BraveWeb tools on my local desktop.

Any-hoodle --
A quick search at "Free Webspace and Free Web Hosting Services" url:http://www.free-webhosts.com/ reveals
that in their database, there are over (at the moment) 109 FREE webhosts that have php and MySQL available.
No, I did not visit each and every host to see if they are still up.
Yet, for a while I tried set up a business website at X10Hosting, because I would get FREE access to 500 meg of space and access to PHP & MySQL. Unfortunately, I gave up trying to get their service to work, and wasn't inspired to make my site there work, because I really had no serious need of a website at the time.

Again, I am happy with my site at BraveHost. I don't want to shop. I want to find a reliable webhost to help others set up their own sites at, and BraveHost appears to be the best that I've found.

Peace

Browser: Chrome & IE & FF

OS: XP

I am sure you already know this, but PHP and MySQL are server side operations. This means that the web hosts server needs to do more work than just passing out HTML/CSS files. Whereas, Javascript runs in the visitors browser. So most hosts do not offer PHP and MySQL for free. Yes, there are certainly web hosts that offer PHP and MySQL access on free web sites. But you need to be careful of their offerings.

As an example, "awardspace.com" offers PHP and MySQL on free sites. I have a site there myself. It was very easy to set up and worked just fine. I installed a "MyBB" forum on my site as as test. But the limitations are, you get only one MySQL data base, the size of the data base is limited, and access is very very slow. In many areas around the US and other countries, access is non-existent. While you are not required to upgrade at any time, access problems make it almost useless.

Javascript is a good alternative. I use Javascript extensively. But it needs a lot of work, if you want to do something beyond basic calculation. I have had the need for complex math for processing Sine and Cosine Integrals. This included multi-dimensional arrays, to store real and imaginary data, and ways of passing them to functions. It took about a week to figure out how to generate a new Javascript data type, and how to add to existing data types, but it can be done.

Javascript can be used to process a list, by what ever method you want. You don't even have to expand the data types. The biggest drawback to Javascript is that, it runs in the visitors browser, and it's inability to read/write files. You never know the capabilities of your visitors PC, so you don't know if complicated operations are going to bog their system down. You can get around file reading and writing by creating your list files as Javascript files, and then sourcing them from the HTML. You can then display and manipulate this data. But you can't save the results of the reprocessing. Some have used cookies on the visitors PC to save intermediate data. This works, but is heavily dependent on the controls that a visitor places on cookie generation.

One of the other things you can't do with Javascript, is access protection. While it often seems like it's working, and can fool some users, it doesn't work. On one of your pages, you have a protected access to your forum. I'm not sure why you want to protect it, but you didn't provide any instructions for users to obtain a password. However, because everything is in Javascript, access to the forum only took about 5 minutes. It's never a good idea to depend on Javascript to protect your files.

Browser: Firefox, Netscape, Sea Monkey, Internet Explorer, .....

OS: Solaris (Sparc,x86), Linux, XP

Philo:

Thank you for the awesome post.

Yes, I did know that "PHP and MySQL are server side operations". *grin*

I have setup connected web servers, file servers, and I run XAMPP locally. *grin*

> Javascript is a good alternative...
Amen, on all points.
I really just wanted to process a text file (like Perl, Python, and PHP can do), but JavaScript can't.
The tool that I wanted to use PHP on BraveNet for would search through a text file for matching strings.

I was really concerned about converting the text file to a JS program that created an array or hash, because there are 29766 rows in the file. My fear (which no one has answered) was... Can JavaScript handle such a large data object/variable within JavaScript?

I knew that Python and PHP and Perl could handle file searches, and I was confused into thinking that BraveNet / BraveHost allowed FREE sites to use PHP.

Any other host that I use will _only_ have to search the text file, and return matching strings. No big deal.

>I'm not sure why you want to protect it...
// satire mode: on.
Yeah, you figured out that MMDD meant month/day.
You're just a genius, and I'm a maroon, huh?
// satire mode: off.
The reason why (if you must know ) I am developing a password-protection scheme is to stop robots from accessing the Forum (or any other web module that is protected using the shell-game approach).

Currently my protection method is still in development phase 1 of around 12 phases. Some of the rest of the development that must be done is ... I want to move the JS for the function to a separate js file, and add a list (array) of encoded passwords. No, there wouldn't be any protection from a human reading my code (like you did) and figuring out what the password is, provided that they can decode the previously separately encoded password, but a robot would not be so lucky.

Did you ever think... I plan on using this site as a selling demo of the features that I can provide for families and grandparents who have no idea how to code javascript and are not interested in learning... but don't want their pictures of their children to be used to put their children up for adoption... or for families who want a calendar on their website to be protected from criminals looking for people who are on vacation... or want to protect their forums because they want to share private family information with some protection.

I still need to reverse-engineer another JS app, and incorporate parts of it into my solution, so that my DEMO site on BraveHost can be used to DEMO my security solution to others.

Yes, I know that javascript is not the most secure way to protect people's personal information... but it IS a start.

My site is not named "securecomputers" for no reason at all. *grin*

Peace.

Browser: Chrome & FF

OS: XP

Due to restrictions in Javascript's memory, the maximum limit of an array is 2^32 - 1 or 4294967295. The number of items, also known as the length property, cannot be greater than that. You can construct some very simple tests to check whether your programs can handle everything.

While Javascript has quite a number of functions, there are many areas that are lacking. For array manipulation you might want to create new methods using the "prototype" property. I have used the "prototype" property to create entirely new data types. Here is a link to a page on Array functions that shows you how to add extra array methods, like "pop", "push", "shift", etc..

The biggest roadblock you are going to run into is with Internet Explorer users. It turns out that some versions of IE can not accept a block of script with more than 32768 rows of text in it. Some users have had to add code on the server side to inject a close script tag and a new open script tag, every 1000 rows. This stopped IE from generating Javascript errors. If you can't do this on the server side, you might have to split your file into multiple pieces.

The latest versions of Firefox had the ability to change the rendering engine to IE, but I don't know if they also emulate the Javascript limitations. If you could limit your visitors to Firefox only, you wouldn't have any problems, but that isn't a option.



Yes, I did recognize that MMDD meant month/day, but I didn't have to go that far. I didn't need to access it with a password.

// satire mode: on.
We don't need no stinking passwords.
// satire mode: off.

If you want a much better forum, with lots of built in protection, try using MyBB. Of course you will need paid hosting, or one of the free sites that offers PHP and MySQL access. It is far more configurable than the free one that Bravenet offers. I manage a help forum, for another web host, that uses MyBB. It took a week to figure out all of the configuration items, but after that, it's pretty easy to maintain. It works fine under XAMPP. I have used it on several Unix systems (Sparc and x86).

Browser: Firefox, Netscape, Sea Monkey, Internet Explorer, .....

OS: Solaris (Sparc,x86), Linux, XP