Need help with hosting, please, Not sure where to start Options

[danielkraus]

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

[fixtatik]

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).