Hosting options for a newbie?

[porker]

Hi ppl. I'm new to webdesign, and have never had my own website. I've built one though with front page, and some scripting, which I intend to host somewhere. There will be an on-line community on it with message board and a live chat. Right now, I plan on putting all this on a Unix server, as long as nobody advises me otherwise. And since I'm out to purchase a domain as well, there are a couple of nice "all-in" packages I found in this site's directory:
- softicom offering all the bells and whistles for 75$ a year (domain inclusive, 7 Gb traffic);
- gnxonline offering almost the same (unlimited bandwidth);
- one2host with their "unlimited bandwidth".
Has anybody please got any experience with above?
Thanks for your input.

[JTY]

Well..... there's no such thing as unlimited bandwidth.....

[porker]

Yep, I know this. Went through these blah-blah small prints and understood that I'm on my own, and they will start charging me whenever they decide. The question now is - whether 7 Gb will be sufficient for me, and I don't know the answer as my site is not up yet:cry:

[Entemedia]

True. Unlimited bandwidth is completely non-existant. Always pay for bandwidth, and select the best package with just enough bandwidth.

[JTY]

7Gb should be enough..... Does your site use a lot of graphics, or other multimedia?

[Jaiem]

Start with the 7GB. If you need more you can alway supgrade your account.

[akashik]

Originally posted by porker
There will be an on-line community on it with message board and a live chat.

That's going to be the hit. Both can generate a fair amount of 'bandwidth'. Having said that the large amount of dead forums online is a guide to how it's a long and steady growing process to get a forum nice and active.

7 gig should be plenty for quite a while.

The only thing you should look out for the CPU usage. More than a few 'cheapo' hosts have a nasty habit of killing sites that use anything above a flatline of CPU usage - forums and live chats can suck a fair bit of juice. I'd recommend a javachat for the live chat as many are client side and therefore need nothing more than a brief download (30k or so usually) For a forum, try to go for PHP over Perl. PHP tends to be a little friendlier on the power usage (well written ones anyway *lol*)

Greg Moore

[porker]

Great, thanks ppl. You have been very helpful. I guess I'll go for this package (as long as they care to reply my e-mail that is :mad: )

[akashik]

Originally posted by porker
Great, thanks ppl. You have been very helpful. I guess I'll go for this package (as long as they care to reply my e-mail that is :mad: )

Oh.. umm... yeah... that's one other small thing.

support support support.

If you don't get a reply within 24 hours (8 would be better), to a presales question, expect worse once you're paying them money. Hosts do get busy at times, and email servers do go pear shaped but if they're on the ball you should get your replies in a decent amount of time. :)

Greg Moore

[Colin]

I remember posting here about how A+ Net's sales rep took...like...4 days and 3 e-mails to answer my questions.

God that was awful :shake:

[toneatlas]

If you have support related questions you should go with a host that offers 24x7 support.
Call me crazy but if you have a technical question would you want it answered through email? or wait 5 hours for a response?

Go with a host that you will benefit from nothing less....

[rmedina]

FYI...<no advertising here>
Ads go in the advertising forum

[porker]

Frankly?...
Too damn cheap to be serious. There are no gifts in our life (unfortunately).:shake:

[rmedina]

*** sigh... some people just don't get the point of not advertising outside the ad forum ***