My First Hosting

I have read enough of the forum rules that I should search before posting a "I want a host" site. Of the few hours of searching I have done on this site alone I have come up with plenty of ideas, and turned down plenty of ideas. I was wondering if you could offer some final advice.

The final hosting companies that I have found on this site (and through my own personal searching) are:
(mt) media temple ($7.95) --> http://www.mediatemple.net/
host rocket -->($4.95) http://www.hostrocket.com/products/index.htm
LYPHA --> ($6.95) http://www.lypha.com/hosting_plans.shtml

That list of 3 sites was brought down from around 10 before I came to these forums. I eliminated a few through topics I read here and other information from other websites.

I don't want to take up too much of your time but I will give you a quick idea of what I have been looking at and what I think I need. I'm not stingy and I am willing to pay up to $8 a month of shared hosting.

I am looking for a personal website. I don't yet have a domain but I have seen hosting sites that will purchase a .com domain for as little as $5. I am okay with that. I just need PHP/MYSQL/APACHE which seems to be available on nearly every hosting plan. But here is where I am out of my league. I don't know which plan has the best value because I don't know much about them. They have the features that I want, but I have read reports on a few saying they have "down time" and they are "slow". I don't think this would be too much of a problem for me but that is why I am appealing to your for advice.

Do you feel any of these is better than the other? The Host Rocket deal seems to be phenomenal for its price, maybe there is something that I don't see. Anyone have a good/bad relationship with any of these companies?

And if there is a comparable site that you feel is worth mentioning feel free to PM me. I may have already checked it out but I have already invested enough time into this to know I should not make a hasty choice.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Joe P

(Remember: Free is not my concern. It is the quality of the hosting. This will be my first time and I would like it to be a great experience.)

My advice is until you've a decent following of visitors, to create any personal site on a home PC (assuming you've got a decently powerful one). This is what I do, and when enough visitors per day come so that it takes up my connection, I will buy a dedicated line, but another option would be to move to a hosting plan at that point.

Thanks for the comment Yushatak,

Actually right now I am using a friends website as hosting. I don't mind the URL name being very long, but I got more involved and now I have a couple large projects. (including my own custom built CMS for a family webpage anyone in my family). Another problem would be that I use my laptop for everything. I develop locally on my harddrive using a few nice packages (you may have heard of EasyPHP, or InstantRails). No extra computer to turn into a web server although the idea is appealling.

I would like to have my own domain name, and my own webspace. I have learned so much since I started playing around with web development in January and feel I have gotten to the point where I have grown large enough that I gracefully part from my friends domain.

I am leaning toward HostingRocket at the moment. I am sorta discouraged that this post got only a few views, and just this one reply after a number of days. I will keep searching the forums though.

Really hard to believe you are considering host rocket or even considered it your top three. Take a closer look at the other two and skip that one.

check out http://www.ipower-hosting.com

Can't believe they are not down on your list.

Thanks for the suggestions (I received a few PMs with great suggestions). I like the offers I received. But I feel I will go with (mt) because they offer Ruby on Rails and soon they will upgrade almost everything which I find very attractive.

A few of the offers I received did beat out (mt) on a few points. Especially for a first timer spending $8 a month for hosting might be a little ambitious. I want to thank you for your help, I will certainly keep those hosting companies bookmarked in case something does not work out with (mt).

Thanks Everyone,
Joe P

It is good that you decided against this route. Especially since most ISP's forbid this type of activity on their connection.

i would not consider any of those that you listed, i would consider a company that puts real bandwidth expectations, not a high number to attract unknowing customers. of the ones in this thread ipower is the only i would consider going with if i were to be buying from one of the mentioned providers.