Hi all. I am launching a site sometime before christmas, and need to know a few things about hosting. I may have waited too long to find out, as I need to get more coding and content written.

What should I look for? What kind of features etc.? I am new and know almost nothing about hosting. I use Dreamweaver to code and edit(started as a way to reverse engineer code, and now as a learning tool)is there anything I need to worry about with compatibility?
I appreciate any assiatnce. Thanx, Daniel

are you looking for free hosting or for paid hosting? your budget is going to play a big part in choosing the best host. free ones won't give nearly as good support as a paid, and probably not as reliable a server.

most of the paid ones are around $6 or $7 a month, but the only thing they focus on is crazy amounts of space & bandwidth. the biggest thing i worry about is reliability.

the two hosts i've been with during the past 3 years:
dreamhost - half a TB space (way too much for most people), 5 TB monthly bandwidth, and both increase weekly. the bandwidth is nice, but it probably means they're overselling, which can lead to crashes and problems in the future. their customer service is pretty responsive, and so far for any problems i've had they've dealt with quickly. with dreamhost, how your site is going to fair depends on the server you get. some of their servers have a nice 99.5% uptime, while others are around 94%.

mediatemple - my current host, and i was with them for a year before dreamhost. they're expensive ($20 / month), but it's definitely worth it. 100GB space / 1TB bandwidth, all on their "grid server." mediatemple is best if you ever expect to have large peaks of traffic, because instead of using only your server's resources, it borrows memory from other computers in the grid. their customer service is pretty efficient, although they advertise a response within 24 hours (a few of my questions took over 36 hours to be answered).

I like 1and1.com

They are really cheap, yet reliable. My site has never gone down. They have a customer service number that you can call if you have a problem, so that is nice.

I offer free and paid hosting. If you have a domain then thats fine, I can reduce the price 4 dollars? for more info you can go here

http://aberisk.com/hosting

other host I recommend are dreamhost and bluehost :]

Thanx for the info. I was planning on spending around 20.00 a month, I wanted to make sure that I have a lot of space. A friend of mine and his brother own ionhosting.com, and I tried a year ago to get a site together, but they were no help, the site was to be a drop ship site. We decided against it.

I don't know how to calculate or anticipate bandwidth usage. We will be running a directory site, an encyclopedia of lingerie, its history, designers and their backgrounds, garments, fabrics etc. It is set up similar to a dictionary, and all company listings will have links to that site of course.

Knowing this, how do I calculate how much bandwidth I will need?

Also, the domain I want is registered to somone else, and it is not up for sale. How can I find out if I can purchase the domain from this comapny? If it is possible. Thanx aagain

bandwidth really depends on how many visitors you expect to recieve a month with how much data is stored in your directories. bandwidth determines how fast things will load on your site basically. Im not sure how much bandwidth you will need but an average about be about 50GB?also if the domain is already purchased by another person then there is nothing you can do except look for another extension or wait for that domain to expire :]

Thanx, I will probably go a little higher than the 50GB, I like to play it safe.

I have some back up domain names, I will purchase one here soon.

If you would check out my first overlay on myspace, http://www.myspace.com/directorysexy, its our myspace page for the site we will luanch in oct-nov timeframe.

Please critique my work. If you would like the code let me know. This was the 3rd or 4th design/page/site I have attemted. Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

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