What should I do for hosting my website?

I'd start off as simple as possible and then grow as necessary.

If you're using PHP, Ruby on Rails, almost any other non-windows platform, I recommend a package from http://slicehost.com - the 256MB slice is a very good package to start with. It allows you full control over a part of a server, and you can make any changes as necessary. Also, their support is quite fast and helpful.

I recommend that you take a look at Google App Engine: http://code.google.com/appengine/

(The Python version), for the following reasons: 1. Python is a good language to learn. You can use it for other things beside building a web app. GAE is similar to Django.

1. The GAE datastore is easier to fathom than a traditional database. For some reason, I always found databases hard to understand, and it seems that designing schemas for non trivial projects is a separate and distinct skill set from software engineering.

2. GAE solves the updating/patching of working code by providing a sane environment and tools to update and version your app. You can easily switch back to a previous version. Patching datastore schemas is slightly harder.

3. You get scalability out of the box. You don't have to worry about hardware, or even configuring "virtual" instances. None of that. But you probably won't have to worry about scalability for a while.

4. It will pretty much be free, unless you have more than say 5M page views a month!

Cheers, M

يفضل دائما الاقتصاد في المصاريف في البداية -لكن دون التضحية بالجودة. لذلك اختيار VPS للاستضافة خيار مريح أفضل من تأجير سيرفر كامل.

شركة slicehost مناسبة تماما. أسعارها مناسبة وطريقة الإدارة بسيطة. لكن قبل شهور بيعت هذه الشركة للعملاق Rack Space. ما زالت slicehost تقدم خدماتها بشكل مستقل، لكنها تقدمها أيضا باسم آخر ضمن باقات الحوسبة السحابية لـ Rack Space، وهذا الخيار الثاني أفضل، فهو أكثر مرونة من ناحية الشعر وقريب الشبه بخدمات أمازون.

لا أنصحك باستخدام Google App Engine، فهي على الأرجح محجوبة في سوريا والسودان، بسبب قوانين الحكومة الأمريكي.

بالنسبة للـ CDN فلن تحتاج إليه في البداية.

It really depends on what you are doing and what do you need? If all you need is a some PHP or RoR with DB back end, I recommend that you start with shared hosting, something like dreamhost.com. Then, when you need more server power and bandwidth, I recommend Amazon AWS.

For initial phases I would definately recommend shared hosting, try godaddy and similar for very cheap hosting. You get with it the support, backup etc...as you get volume and high BW needs you would need to look at other options. If you need credit card payments try Authnet.