I would suggest A Small Orange - Web Hosting, Software and more! for hosting. $5/mo and they have excellent support.

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Talk Digital Design - Currently in development.
Prolific Dreamer - Up and running since 01/Jun/08, but the theme is being developed at present. RSS Feed

Actually MYSQL can be run on a windows platform and a lot of window based hosting accounts do come with it. As for phpbb, it can be run on any operating system, as long as it has a web server.

With respect to hosting, my recommendation would be to use Linux if you do not plan to use ASP on your site, because generally Linux is more secure and stable platform and majority of the windows based hosting companies use IIS as web server, which isn’t as good as Apache.

Since you are a newbie, my recommendation would be to go with a CPanel based Linux hosting account, since CPanel is really easy to use with respect to hosting account management. Check out Knownhost, ASO, hostgator etc. they are good hosts.

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India Travel Forum | Why most forums fail within 1 year! | Free Travel Directory

I am using Host Gator and so far so good. I am on a linux server and I use phpbb3 now for my forums. Seems Good. Plus I have an arcade, gallery and some other pages and no issues so far. I have only used them for six months after I left a real crappy server.

I also manage a mybb forum that is on go daddy it seems alright for the most part, it was slow/down once I that I know of in the last 2.5 years and it is on a linux server as well.

The one thing though I like the C Panel Host Gator uses, I really do not like the panel GoDaddy has but that is just my personnel taste though.

Pretty much every web host around will [or at least should] provide all that's needed to run phpBB. If you're unsure, you can always email their sales team. Us webhosts don't bite!

Just be careful of some providers. Some [I have heard that 1&1 do this] do not allow your MySQL databases to use all the space in your plan. As far as I know, 1&1 only let you use 100MB for MySQL. Others [and this comes from experience ] will "restrict your CPU usage" [i.e won't let you get what you pay for - HostGator are terrible for this]. It's their way of cramming as many people as possible onto a single server and increase their profits.

Whenever you are shopping for a web host, you just need to search the net for "Company Name" + "reviews". You'll soon pull up data on whether they're a good or bad choice

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i used to have 1&1 - they let me have about 50 megs of a MYSQL database and then said it was full.... it sucked

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Jacob
Tech Help Forums - Free tech support for you!
iWebFusion General Manager - Simply hosting!

i just don't see hostgator as a company to use. they are always having there servers hacked. they're always crashing peoples sites. they're always suspending accounts they feel are being a resource hogs. they're load times are not any greater then the next hosting company.

the webhost posts about godaddy being bad were written by people i feel that did not know how to run or maintain there site.

one guy said he hosted a blog which was sluggish, i highly doubt he's getting 150 people at a time viewing his blog. he may have had people hyperlinking images, bad spiders crawling it, eating up bandwidth.

i think when choosing a company you should ask if they tend to babysit your site for you, if that's what you're needing. i myself maintain my entire site top to bottom. i do sitemaps,robots.txt,htaccess,repairing if needed & optimizing my own database. these things are needed to ensure your site does not load slow or act in weird ways.

i myself prefer a company that will allow me full range on how i want my site to run.

that's just my opinion.

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My Forum:
http://aresforum.net

Most web hosting providers won't baby site your website so to speak, however, they should provide basic monitoring of the services and the server load. It's part of server management and it comes with being a web host.

We do differ from most web hosts as we do take the time to look over customer websites simply because we host some medium to large websites and we want to ensure they are not experiencing technical difficulties as that means downtime for them and their users.

Not all webmasters know PHP/MySQL so if there is an error and we can fix it, we'll contact the customer and let them know we're aware of the error and suggest a fix or login and fix it ourselves. It's more of a common courtesy than a babysitting job . Whether they're paying $7.00 a month or $70.00 per month, it shouldn't matter. If there's a problem, fix it when the need arises.

We've had a few cases where the webmaster wasn't even aware of a problem and we took care of it and let them know how to prevent it from happening again. One was with a vBulletin database and a conflicting modification they had installed.

I suppose each web hosting provider does things differently, however, personally, I feel watching over things is a part of daily operations. Some owners like to watch and check in, some sit back in a chair all day and only tend to problems that are brought to their attention.

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- AirborneFive - Simplified Web Hosting
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see your site offers 40 gigs a month. lol that's outrageous, i use 40 gigs in a day as anyone would with spiders crawling there site. sorry after looking the plans over i would reccomend your hosting is one to stay away from.

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My Forum:
http://aresforum.net

How many gig's do you use per month?

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Jacob
Tech Help Forums - Free tech support for you!
iWebFusion General Manager - Simply hosting!

Are you referring to our web hosting services? We primarily focus on shared hosting and just recently introduced dedicated servers with VPS following shortly.

If you're using 40GB/Day, averaging 2.5-3TB/month, then shared hosting would not be for you, as I'm sure you're aware, however, simply because it is not right for you doesn't mean the service isn't right for someone with a lower usage.

Also, simply because spiders (Google, Yahoo, MSN or other) crawl a site doesn't mean the bandwidth will spike. If you make use of robots.txt and disable hotlinking of your images properly, then you're able to tell spiders where to go and where not to go.

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- AirborneFive - Simplified Web Hosting
- First Month is 100% Free - 60 Day Money Back Guarantee
- 99.99% Network & Server Uptime Guarantee