I think I know what I'm doing, I've been running my own websites for years now, some on a university account where I'm a student, and some on free hosting sites.

Here's my 1st question - I'm designing websites for two different people (maybe more) and they want me to manage them. They're fairly simple sites, some calendar scripts, email forms, and maybe a shopping cart or two for a small amount of merchandise (band websites) such as CDs etc. How far over my head am I getting by doing this from home with Windows XP and DSL? I think my ISP will allow it since I've been running my own free sites for some time now. I've never had boughten a domain name and transferred it to a host and used their email forwarding. I think I'll be fine but should I be scared of anything?

2nd question - I've taken care of the domain names, but I'm still shopping around for hosting. Considering the size of the sites I don't need alot of space (except for maybe some audio/video). I'm leaning towards godaddy.com from what I've heard. Anyone have anything to say about them or any other suggestions? All Feedback is appreciated, thanks,
Lou.

First things first, hosting sites from your own DSL line is a bad idea. If one user has a cable internet connection and connects to your server and decides to download some file, that user could eat up all the bandwidth causing everyone else to get "Page not available" errors.

As for godaddy hosting, I honestly don't know.

about godaddy.com, I had a domain name registered with them a while back and they were pretty good. They were relativly inexpensive too. Never really had any problems with them. Of course, I never really had to do anything too complicated with them either.
I was happy, however, that when my domain name expired (I didn't need it anymore) they simply sent me a notice about it, and when I didn't respond, they just cancelled my account, they didn't try to pull the "we're going to continue charging you until you tell us to stop" trick

I've heard that it's best to avoid GoDaddy's hosting. Their DNS stuff is amazing, but the hosting is crap, from what I've heard. DSL/Cable/Dialup connections are not intended/designed nor capable of handling webservers, or servers in general. If you want to host a server, go for, at least T1.

There are loads of hosts which would be sufficient for your needs. You mention there are scripts, on your sites, though. What sort of scripts are they? PHP, ASP?

If it's PHP I'd take a look at:
http://www.hostrocket.com
http://www.unitedhosting.com

who are both decent hosts and not too expensive. Beware of all the low cost hosts around at the moment, though. A lot of them aren't worth using, and you'd be better off trying some other hosts. Once you know your requriements you can also search here:
http://www.webhostinghunt.com

ipowerweb?

I imagine most of my scripts will be cgi and php in response to your reply. I have about 100 more questions I'd like to ask, is this the place to do it? I don't want to monopoloze the forum with newbie questions but I'm looking for some simple answers.

ipowerweb

Bad , bad , very bad idea. I've read so many horror stories about them.

Go ahead and ask any questions you need to! That's what the forum's here for. There's no such thing as a silly question... well maybe

they seem to be reasonably priced and their support got back to me within the hour. Anyone have anything to say about them or reccomend anyone better? Also, any suggestions where to buy my domain names from?

For domain names I recommend namecheap.com as for better hosting I could do a shameless plug, but I won't you should be fine with them. I haven't seen any horror stories lately about them and getting back to you with in an hour is a definite plus.

Another newbie question: If I were to add a merchant account to a site, I've heard you shouldn't use one that comes with your hosting plan. Is this true? If so, any suggestions on who to use?

If you are going to be doing alot of transactions and can afford $15 a month I recommend http://www.cdgcommerce.com/ but if you aren't going to be doing a lot of transactions, I recommend going to a 3rd party payment processor like http://www.2checkout.com . I've used both and was happy with them(still use CDG/Authorize.Net).

I got an Ipower account almost 2 months ago, I am still not up. There were technical difficulties with the server and its VDeck Technology, from the very start. It was taking parts of the code and displaying it in text areas on the form. They never figured out what the problem was. So I offered a solution (had to get this thing up) Transfer me over to the Windows Platform and I would use FrontPage and Access. Rep said great, that would work. Well not only do I find out (after I change over) that the marketing deals they advertise on their site are no longer open to me (checked their site - it still says you get the $50 from overture and news, joke content), but the server is now having problems reading my .asp pages (I don't think they can even read .asp files) - in other words my customers cannot access pages to order things. I have contacted the technical department through the phone (15 min wait) and email (never have gotten satisfactory answers if at all) and all they will say is they are confused and will call me back. No calls back. And my business is not up and running. I am going to go with another host, even if I do not get my money back.

Anyone have anything to say about them or reccomend anyone better? Also, any suggestions where to buy my domain names from?

You can seach for web hosting providers in specialized web hosting directories, search engines, forums. Then, choose group of providers which you consider to be the best and try to contact them!

I have quite a few sites I manange on a server that I rent space on. I pay the large rental fee and charge my customers for teh space they need. Most people get it for $7.00 per month paid annually @ $84.00 a year. Some of the sites that are on the server I do the maintenace for and some just rent the space and do thier own maintenance. For more info on all that you can email me. I have been doing just what you say you want to do for about 5 years working from home and so far it works for me.

Hi milwaukee66,

I have built band websites plenty of times.. If you have any questions, I can chat live with you at the site listed in my signature. If you have a lot of questions and need personal support, I would click.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Angus Bay