Hosting

I am looking for a place to host. I just want to do some testing/learning. Any ideas? Does Microsoft offer free hosting for learners?

I am working in asp.net express and sql express.

if you are just looking to mess around and build a site to learn, you can do all that right on your PC. Visual Studio comes with a built in webserver to run ASP.NET apps. If you want something that is hooked up to a domain name, and other people can access, then you could try something like discountasp.net who is offering free IIS7 hosting as a beta.

http://www.discountasp.net/sp_iis7hosting.aspx

Other than that, if you search around the web, you may find some free hosting, but most will cost you at least a few bucks a month.

Thanks Matt. If I develop a site in sql express, how do I host it? I mean does the database have to be upgraded to sql 2005?

SQL Express is a stripped down version of SQL 2005.

If you were to lets say develop a site with DB connectivity locally on your machine using ASP.NET and SQL Express, then you wanted to make the site live on the web, it would be a pretty easy task to simply create the same tables on the SQL Server DB on the webhost, and import your data from SQL Express to the SQL Server on the host.

Hosts don't use express, but full versions because generally they will host multiple customers databases on a single server, which SQL Server is fully designed to handle.

So yes its all compatible, so you can feel safe testing things out using your local development machines web server and database server, knowing you can easily move that to the web if you so desire later on.

thanks I was looking for this hope the SQL works for me