Ok - I may be putting the cart before the horse, but now that I am REALLY ready to get this website done, I could use some input on who to use to host my site - I've heard of a few but not sure about prices, and such

Thanks
Heather

The two companies I've done business with and are very good to work with...

http://www.siteground.com
http://www.1and1.com

The amount of storage and transfer is unreal, and the speed is pretty good. My site is hosted by siteground.

Greg

It all depends on what you want to do.

Some things to think about:

• Flash template or HTML site (or both)?
• Will you have a proofing site/cart?
• How much do you intend to store at your website?
• Do you intend to have a blog (you should)?
• What is your budget?
• What is your aptitude for web coding/technical stuff?

Here's two formularies for you:

The Flash Template & Provider Hosted Model
Big Folio, BluDomain, etc. hosts your website for a set yearly (or monthly fee).
You get a few GB of space (plenty).
The webhost handles technical stuff and support. Back-end tools make uploading and changing your site a snap.

Pros: You will have a very polished web presence. You won't have to pay separately for web hosting.
Cons: Your site will have a limited ability to be customized. Not all users like Flash. Up-front cost.

The DIY model
You register a domain and choose a web hosting company like Westhost, GoDaddy, DreamHost, etc.
You build/have built a custom website.
You build/install a blog (Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger).

Pros: You control all aspects of your site. You can install a shopping cart system at your site.
Cons: If you're not design-savvy or technically proficient you may have major issues. The cost can easily balloon past the template model.

Good luck!

Edit: We just switched to Westhost for our web hosting. Westhost isn't the cheapest, but it's not a shared host -- where other users activity can negatively affect the speed of your site (a problem we had with Powweb). The Virtual Private Server makes a huge difference in the speed of our site!

Nice post Damon. Good things to consider.

I'm a DIYer and I use 1and1.com. I pay about $10/month for WAY more space and bandwidth than I'll ever need. I host several websites for friends at no extra charge. The server speed has been excellent for me, and I'm pretty sensitive to that when I visit other photographers websites...

For the DIY approach I can't recommend 1and1 to highly, their speed is great, their customer service has been great the couple times I've called and the user interface is great too. I can create as many email boxes as I want, as many sub domains as I want, register as many domain names as I want (the fees for 5 names are included in my package, the rest cost $5.99/yr). I manage everything via their web based control panel and FTP, it works for me.

For the Full Meal Deal Flash Hosting I recommend Bigfolio.com. I've met those guys in person and I doubt you'll find anyone who isn't happy with the level of personal service they give to each customer.

If you go Flash remember flash doesn't work on the iPhone, so have an HTML alternative....

~Bill

A great hosting company that I use is bluehost.com. They offer hosting for 6.95/mo and offer 300 gigs of space, 3000 gigs of bandwidth, and allow you to host unlimlited sites and domains under one account They are great if you have your own website already or plan to create your own.

If you want to purchase a website template outright I would recommend bigfolio (great customer service and product) or flashpalette.com (cheaper flash sites). With both these companies you purchases the website and then hosting is additional yearly (hosting and domain name registration will always be a yearly fee no matter what you do for a website)

If you are looking for a combined hosting/flash template product then a new company called portfoliositez.com will be offering a combined service for $9.95/mo with a $20 setup fee. They are not launching until the end of september though.

If you choose to go with a template company I would just run a search on the forums to see whether clients are generally happy with the service just so you know what you are getting into. Also make sure that you can edit all your content from a control panel - I think that is the most important feature that a template must have.

I use dreamhost and they've been good, but not great. I pay about $120 per year for unlimited domains and a huge amount of space and bandwidth. I'd say dreamhost is a great value, but not the greatest webhost. There was a period of about a week that my site was down frequently, but in the year I've used them this has been the only real problem. They designed their own web control panel which has a lot of features. One of the best features is 'one-click installs'. This allows you to install many common web softwares, such as a gallery, blog, etc, easily. Dreamhost also offers shell accounts so if you know how to work on the command line it's great. This is definitely a DIY webhost.

I can strongly recommend NOT using IX Webhosting. They're great until you have a problem. Most of their support is in eastern Europe and their service and English is very poor. They also decided at one point that I was using too much space on my account which claimed to have unlimited space so they threatened to terminate my service. I did them a favor and cancelled.

Another support for 1and1.com.

I haven't started my photography business/website yet, but I do have a gaming website (Flash) with forums. I did not realize how great they are until I tried to help my mother out with some hosting issues and found her host to be nearly impossible to even navigate! They also had great customer support when I could not figure out why my Flash SWF was not displaying and the tech support guy actually found the messed up line of code and fixed it for me after we got off the phone!