Installing Plugins and Themes

1. There is a 2MB media upload limit
2. Plugins and themes and uploading to the media library work fine
3. Permalinks – will not work

Editing Files and Permissions

1. Finding your way to the WordPress directory is not trivial (try using Filezilla (which you will need to configure access for)).
2. Editing a file (e.g.  .htaccess or  wp-config.php) will give a  permission denied error . It will require some linux (or windows) admin skills to work around this one.

It’s not really  FREE hosting

For a SMALL EC2 instance, with a local DB and a bandwidth o 50GB of traffic per month, the cost is $50 . For a medium instance it is over $100.

Summary – Try Azure Websites for WordPress

I tried to setup wordpress on a free azure account – it took a total of 5 mintues. No hiccups. The only thing that will take some time to figure out is the DNS mapping from godaddy (or whoever your registrar is) to your hosted website on windows azure. Some changes are required on godaddy – and some on azure ( manage domains section).  The only downside to the free account on azure is the 10 MB limit on the MySQL database (ClearDB – which is MySQL as a service). This can easily be increased, however.

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