Web Hosting Dedicated Hosting

What web hosting package will I need?

I'm looking into starting a chat & dating website (using SQL, PHP etc.) and was wondering what sort of web hosting package I would need to host the site? Do i need a dedicated server? Can I use a virtual one? What should I look out for from my host? I cant predict what sort of traffic I'd have, but I'm being optimistic and hoping to sign up several 1000 users monthly (the host would therefore need to cope with several users being on-line at once). Can anyone give me any advice on this? What sort of traffic can I expect? What sort of band width should I look for? The site wont have provision for webcams initially, but this may be an option in the future. Users will be able to upload photos, videos and music on the site too (with limitations). Any help much appreciated. Thx

Public Comments

1. www.moonfruit.com is good i use it for my site www.steveadams.moonfruit.com
2. for hosting it depends on what domain extention your going to be using, for example .com i would use a usa hosting provider, or uk use an uk etc.. plus you should check for unlimited bandwidth, this is the best option i use hostmonster for my hosting. hope this helps.
3. just bye any server.. visitors arent gonna find you realy fast, I hud that before.. so dont worry about bandwidth, you can upgrade when you need, and on php and sql you can have over 1,000,000 people signup everyday even more, you just need php script and sql database to do it
4. I would certainly give www.1&1.co.uk a good look, their business packages have a massive bandwidth, also they are quite cheap for the 24hr help and support, also you could start off small with their beginner package and just upgrade as your site grows, been with them for over 7 years now and my web has grown from 2 pages to a mighty 300+ and only noticably lost around 20mins uptime over the 7 years..... check them out and then check out the others.....
5. As your site is just starting out I would go with a Virtual server. If the site grows out of the Virtual server then it will not be too difficult to convert to a dedicated one. I would say that your traffic will be minimal at first. Dating sites need a good reputation to grow and that will take some time. The thing you want to look at most is disk space. Since you are looking at hosting a chat service you will probably need to keep archives for at least 6 months and that will use up disk space quickly. Also the pictures will need space. With the virtual host you can just add the space to your hosting package. As for bandwidth, that can grow as your site grows. Start with the minimum then increase it as traffic grows on the site.
6. Here is a good article to review before getting started: http://www.richkahmer.com/build-a-website.html Once you get the site up you'll need to promote it heavily. Build inbound links to your website. Most of the directories online charge a one time fee to review your site and add it to their index. Here are three of my favorites: http://www.avivadirectory.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=kahmer http://www.kahmer.com http://www.joeant.com The more inbound links to your site, the better you will rank with Yahoo / Google / MSN. Also work on your meta tags. Here is an article on how they work: http://www.richkahmer.com/meta-tags.html
7. I would like to recommend cluster failover hosting server, their server is more reliable than regular, that's very important. In your situation, I would like to say you don't need a dedicated server, it's quite expensive, when you have lots of visitors, you can consider that, start from reliable, and cheap plan first, if you got lots of visitor, then go for dedicated server. Good luck, you can find a valuable plan from their website: http://www.111hosting.com
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