Who would you guys recommend for fairly cheap but reliable hosting? I want to start a couple of sites and was thinking of using wordpress, but I haven't had a website before.

1] How much traffic do you expect?
2] Will you use videos/high bandwidth?

1) It's go related so probably not that much.
2) No high bandwidth stuff, but probably downloads of pdfs.

Are you likely to recommend diff. companies for high traffic sites? I had thought to get a low priced plan and just buy a bigger one if it took off.

Probably best is to go free first:

http://www.000webhost.com/

If the site takes off you can back it up and restore to a paid host OR upgrade. This free host has most of the features of paid hosts.

Even if you want a paid host- the above is a good learning environment..

Looks cool, do you think I can use wordpress with that? They don't mention it specifically and seem to have a "website builder" of their own.

I guess you will have to manually install it, but since they support php+mysql it should work. But since it's free you could simply try it.

IMO the biggest problem with such hosts is that you need to use FTP instead of a version control system. But that mainly matters if you change the website often.

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Sanity is for the weak.

wordpress can be installed through "Fantastico" - it takes two or three clicks...

http://www.000webhost.com/fantastico

You don't need FTP - it can all be done through "Cpanel"

http://www.000webhost.com/free-cpanel-hosting

Thanks for the help!

You can never go wrong with hostgator but that is on the upper echelon of hosting services and would cost more as compared to average services offered.

I do not think that using a free service would hurt though as they are as well known to provide comparable services already. Some people mistake free to be not on a good level but being free would not automatically say the level of services it offers, but just explains how they earn from.

There are a lot of free ones out there that are definitely worth a look, even compared to paid ones.

Yes I'd agree. I use hostgator a lot and in six years it's never let me down - and I've seen some weird things.

I've never use3d HG above shared level - there are better offers around for VPS and deicated I think.

Just going back to the original point. I've played with "ooo" and it seems to do a good job and is pretty robust. Added to that having Cpanel for free means its a good introduction to webhosting. In truth, if the proposed website was to take off - I'd probably be looking at different hosting...


Let us know how it goes Stable - if you need any technical input post here.