What are some good web hosts that I could use to launch my first website?

I’ve been happy with the price and service at Godaddy.com.

Their web site is a bit maddening, very tough to navigate, but I’ve grown used to it, and rarely had to go there after the initial setup.

I hear A Small Orange have a good reputation. The basic plan is quite cheap too.

You should be proud of writing good markup.

1and1.com has cheap hosting for a simple portfolio account.

Thanks to you all; I’ll look into each of these services and see which fits me best.

After seeing how on GoDaddy I have to choose which operating system I want my server to use, Linux or Windows, I should bring to your attention that I use Mac OS X. Will this be a problem when trying to connect to a web host using Windows or Linux?

@nashish Choose linux. It’s much better for hosting, what the vast majority of the web (including us) uses, and it’s totally compatible with Mac OS X.

@nashish No problem connecting with your Mac to either Windows or Linux servers. There is very little difference for the user.

I chose Windows because I wanted ASP.Net and Microsoft SQL Server.

With a Mac I would probably go with Linux, because I could run the same server software (typically Apache, PHP, MySQL) at home for testing.

http://www.byethost.com/ is a very good host and even has a well rated free hosting options. For an example of what someone has done usign bytehost (using the free or cheap option i believe, look at http://www.bean0.com/ – which is a site for hosting graphic design car skins for an online game)

I second 1and1. They have some very affordable hosting plans. I’ve had my website with them for 2.5 years and have been quite happy with them.

I think I might go with 1&1… I’ll let you guys know what I choose!

I use asmallorange and like it. It is the fastest shared hosting I have ever used and the support is fantastic. My only gripe is that you don’t get that much disk space. Other than that the have been great.

One night it was about 2am PST and I sent in a support request to have eRuby installed on the server. About 10 minutes later I got a e-mail saying that it was done.

@Mclaren7703 That’s a great tip, http://www.byethost.com/
It looks really complete. I expected a Geocities lookalike, was pleasantly surprised they have options like Wordpress and Joomla.

Actually, there are a couple of “gotcha’s” to look out for if you develop your site on one OS and host it on another. I don’t know anything about Mac OS, but I once moved a site from a Windows server to a Unix server. Everything else the same, and I was told there’d be no compatability problem whatsoever—WRONG! Because Unix is case-sensitive, many of my links and graphic images broke. Not rocket science to fix, but I had to go through everything and make sure that the case matched exactly for all my pages and graphics. That said, I do concur that Unix/Linux is a more robust server to host a site on. I just started on the road to build my own web site, and I want to set up a Linux system to develop it on, even though I haven’t decided yet whether I want to get a static IP and host it myself or pay a hosting service.

I think byethost would be fine once I’ve registered my domain now… I thought their service seemed too good to be true, but I am just learning about the web. The only “catch” I saw was the horrid free domain names you could use. However, it does cost nothing and there are no ads so there isn’t much arguing to be done.

In any case, I’ll let you folks know what I choose ultimately.

@nashish :: You should have been around in 1998. Free hosting was all the rage. It was great until you wake up one morning and the company vanished (along with your data). Just saying. If you use them make sure everything is backed-up.

@nashish – I just registered my domain the other day, even though the site won’t be ready to go live for a year or more. I’d hate to make all my graphics and put the name all throught my site only to discover that someone else nabbed the name while I was developing the site…

@johnpowell – That’s one of the reasons I’m tempted to get a static IP and host my site myself.