sandgatefilmclub.ct.ws
(please share the FULL error message you see, if applicable)
The site doesn’t get indexed on Google and I can’t look up its IP address. Is this because of the free hosting or because of the .ct.ws domain? If I were to purchase a .co.uk domain name would the DNS problems be resolved even though I was still using free hosting?
Google can index free sub domains. But in my experience it takes a long time.
And your site IP address is listed in your account dash.
Yeah, but if I try to use that IP address to access the site it fails to connect.
This is shared hosting. IP addresses are not some kind of “authority” because it is shared by many other websites. Visiting the IP directly will never work and is not the correct way to verify literarily anything.
As Meishin said, that IP isn’t unique to your site. So if you try visiting the ip, the server won’t know which site you’re trying to visit and won’t return anything.
You wouldn’t visit google using its IP…
My site has been live for about a year but is not indexed with Google.
then you may wish to sign up on google search console, and see if there have been errors indexing your site:
this article from Admin might help: