I have messed around with making a few websites and always uploaded them to my school webspace. Now however i am enrolled in a school that doesn't offerwebspace and i need a new place to host my sites. I heard that your ISP (mine being comcast) provides you with webspace. Is this true? I also heard that certain functions of scripting and php (not sure exactly what these are either) may not be supported by your webserver. Also i would like to add a forum to my site. If i go through comcast do they have some kind of format that i can use and apply my own skin to?

Thanks for the help.

Most ISP's offer free web space with their package, however most of them just offer basic hosting with FTP and you would hardly get a control panel etc. If you can afford it go with a paid host. That way you could get better support for your scripts etc. If you are looking for forum you can try out phpbb2 or SMF (both free) and there are many skins available for them.

Most paid hosting providers get you free domain name, which is very useful. You can have emails@ this domain, etc.
If you go with a free solution, your site will display lots of ads and will be hosted on a subdomain.