"Farm" expands its website offerings

By ADAM GIFFORD

Taranaki internet company WebFarm is expanding its FreeParking domain registration service to include low-cost website hosting.

General manager Richard Shearer said the move was aimed at people who wanted an internet presence but did not want to spend a lot of money.

For $149.95 a year, FreeParking provides five megabytes of disk space, one POP (point of presence) e-mail account, FTP (file transfer protocol), CGI (common gateway interface) and daily backups.

The FreeParking sites will be hosted in the United States on servers leased from manufacturer Cobalt.

Since launching three months ago, FreeParking has become one of the largest agents for the .nz registry, accounting for 15 per cent of new names registered last month.

Its three-step process contrasts with the nine at Domainz, the much-criticised company responsible for the .nz registry.

WebFarm and FreeParking technical director Craig St George said plans include enabling customers to manage their own DNS (domain name server) information for no charge.

Apart from web hosting and name registration, the third string to WebFarm's bow is acting as agent for WorldPay, a service which allows New Zealand e-commerce sites to accept credit-card payments in currencies other than New Zealand dollars.

FreeParking