Site idea, hosting suggestions needed...

[jamiemac2005]

Hey all, i'm starting work on a new site. Essentially i want it to be flash based(full screen, low filesize, avg framerate) on top of PHP&mySQL. This will be a personal portfolio/info/help site and i'm trying to get as much of it up for as cheap a cost as possible (Because i don't intend to have thousands of users a month) but i'm also looking for it to be as risk free as possible (I don't want to kill a bandwidth limit and have my site down for days on end)... Now i've tried a few low-cost/free hosts but they usually start bulking on the charge for PHP/mySQL support and readcount.

So i was going to ask you all(anyone experienced in setting up sites for this sort of a scale), from experience which hosts do you like? I'm thinking of using a seperate free imagehost (because there's loads of them, and spreading the bandwidth cost over a few hosts[without breaching ts&cs] would make things a little easier) but i need to know what you all think in that way aswell, which hosts don't have a low view limit? etc. I'm not using my ISP's hosting services because they don't allow registering a domain name (they want their company name in there) and i find them VERY unreliable =]

I've been through the other threads in this particular forum on the subject of hosting but nothing is really that substantial. (Possible sticky idea for the future)...

As a final note, with the domain registration & hosting fees i don't want to spend much more than 10% of my current income (that gives me about £300 a year). Again it being a personal site i don't expect to go too far over. So what's your opinion on what i've said? feasability wize?

Cheers,
Jamey

P.S. i'm also thinking of throwing some paid advertising in there to cover some of the cost, anyone have a preference there? (Other than "don't do it"? =])

[carsey]

Ill give you some space on our VPS if you need it. Site load times can be found here:

http://www.the-tech-library.com

That should give you a indication of the speed you want.

I know a site where you can get free .co.uk domain names.

So all in all....can get you started for free

[jamiemac2005]

Thanks for the offer carsey, it's a gudden =] i'll get in contact if i feel i need it, i'm going to explore a load of options first before i even bother coding. I just have concepts and ideas so far. Oh, and the .co.uk domain names? i've got two domains in mind, my shortened name(Jamey.whatever[co.uk/com/net/org are all prefs i guess]) or my full name(JameyMacmillan.whatever) (of course i prefer the shorter, easier to remember).

Cheers,
Jamey

[FredT]

I can't beat carsey's offer, but I do recommend Lunarpages, I've hosted a few sites (four, I think?) on there and they offer unlimited space and bandwidth for $4.95 (US) a month. I think they also give you a free domain for life.

A lot of these inexpensive, high-spec places turn out to be junk, but I've been very happy with their speed, reliability, and customer support. They support pretty much everything you can do on a Linux server, PHP/MySQL, Ruby on rails, PERL, Python, the works.

[jamiemac2005]

Wow, i'll take a look at lunarpages aswell then =]

Haha, yeah i've found most to be very junky and "mySQL will cost you another £100 a year"....

Cheers,
Jamey

[carsey]

Dont be scared to get in touch if you need anything.

Not sure on the full package features but I know theres email accounts, php, MySQl, fantastico and loads more. Can get you a full feature list if needed.

Its Cpanel aswell