Hey guys. I'm looking for some advice. I'm looking at starting a small gaming web page as a hobby. (I know, who doesn't). I got a domain registered (includes forwarding). Right now I'm looking at hosts. So since my budget is next to zero, I'm mostly looking at free hosts. I come up with three canidates. I'm willing to hear about others.

1. Homestead - Unlimited traffic, only a teeny, tiny homestead ad at the bottom of the page that it hardly noticable. 16 megs of space (but you can get more at 16 meg chunks at a time). fairly fast. Big negative, you have to use their editor which is limited, slow and kinda klunky. No FTP
example my home page: http://rcmerritt.homestead.com/duckman.html

2. Hypermart - unlimited traffic, 20 megs of space. Use any editor and will allow cgi, java, and ssi and supports frontpage. FTP. fast. The ad however is agressive and rather big. It can be either popup or banner. I'm a tad worried about space.
Example a mac page:
http://maclevel.hypermart.net/

3. Esmartstart - Unlimited traffic, 100 megs of space, some basic cgi script. Ads are banner at top and bottom. Use any editor you wish. Its a new host and its kinda slow. Files limited to 1 meg max. A bit picky on commerical use.
Example a car show page:
http://www.hmccc.50g.com/showflyers.html

I like homestead because I'm familar with it, the site can grow in space and has hardly any ads. However to make a real page, hypermart has the tools. I rule out places like Tripod and geocities since they have a lot of ads, little space and few tools.Any suggestions?

Well, I know very little about any of the hosts, but based on looking at each page and what you've said about each host, I'd say go for hypermart, unless you know for sure that you won't have any files greater and 1 meg. I, as someone visiting the page, was not bothered by the hypermart ad, but I don't know about the 20 meg limit. If you know that you won't have any files bigger than 1 meg, then go for Esmartstart. Just my two cents.