Webhosts for Personal Use

Syphyre

I'm looking into getting myself some space somewhere for personal use. Not really concerned about space or bandwidth; I don't intend that there will really be many visitors, I would just like a place to consolidate some data, and perhaps make a site with a few webpages on it.

As computer savvy as I am, I am not at all experienced in this regime, hence I'm looking for some information. What other questions do I need to answer to know my needs?

I do plan to setup a DNS pointing to my site as well; is there a suggested registrar for this? Is there a good all-in-one plan?

Appreciate the answers in advance.

DVG

Pretty much any host will let you make a basic web page, most will have MySQL and php support for hosting things like Wordpress blogs, and that will probably serve your needs quite well. Dreamhost is what I've previously used, but if you think you're ever going to get geeky and want to host a rails app or something rackspace or linode will give you a blank private server to customize to your hearts content.

Gilbert0

Second Dreamhost as well. Needed a wedding website, for about $100 for a year, it was fine for what I needed.

There are tons of plugins and features that you are all free (gallerys, Wordpress support, etc) so it's really easy to get everything going.

There are cheaper alternatives but for our wedding it was really just factored into the overal cost.

GnomeTank

Do you need a website, or a web application? Which you need will determine your host choice.

Basically, do you need to run server side code, or will this just be a basic static/DHTML front end?

Syphyre

The truth is, I don't really know what I want/need.

I'm interested in a website, not a web application, although I wouldn't be adverse to playing around with them.

I'm really just looking to play around with an online website presence. I want to be able to throw pictures up there (and not necessarily at all in a webpage, I just want to give someone a bare link to a png or jpg.) I would like to tinker around on the server side as well, although I'm setting up a LAMP box at my home to play around with as well.

Looking at Dreamhost, I think I may start there just to try some things out, and I can always look at another hoster if what I want is a different direction.

(Thanks for the replies btw, was mostly not here over the weekend so didn't get back to read this thread for a couple)

syndalis

I also suggest looking at Host Gator.

They are who I use for most of my clients, they have a great customer service staff, and the lowest rung shared hosting solution still nets you MySQL, PHP, and all the other alphabet paramutations needed to do pretty much whatever you want to do.