I wish to set up my own website and want to know who in your opinion will give me the best deal in terms of the size of the space and cost's to keep it running. I want to start like a website to serve as a open forum for discussions as well as a place for people to come seek advice. The actual desig n and look of the site and its purpose will be quite straight forward to do but i just dont know anything about obtaining domain names , getting the space and uploading it onto teh web. who would you reccomend as a good reliable source for this?

http://www.dakotawebhosting.com allows you to register domains and get hosting at the same place. The hosting is reliable and pretty cheap. I think they are running a special right now for $1.99 domains when you get hosting which is like $4 a month.

GoDaddy.com is the cheapest around.

1&1 Internet. Great rates - starting at $2.99/month, but I would go with the $3.74/month package. Includes 2 domain names, 120GB of storage, 1.2 terabytes of monthly transfer, and a really easy to use administration panel. If you've done any shopping around, you'll recognize how good of a deal this is.

You'll probably want Linux hosting instead of Microsoft hosting, because Linux hosting offers you PHP and MySQL capability which are required for discussion forums powered by phpBB (the most popular free discussion forum software).

IXwebhosting.com

You'll have to sign up for their business plan if you want to open a forum.

First, you need to determine what features you will need for your hosting.

You mention a discussion forum, have you chosen one yet?

Many of these require php and mysql. If yours requires these, ensure that your hosting package supports these.

There are hundreds of people offering webspace and domain names, I use www.easyspace.com

I have cheated and use Yahoo Groups for my discussion forum, as this is free.