If you don't want to rely on someone else, Xsecrets, these are the guys I host with and I really like them (and they are pretty inexpensive for what you get):

1and1

If you went with the cheapest option (2.99/mo) you get 250GB a month, 10 mysql databases, php scripting, a free domain, 2GB of e-mail space w/ imap, and more...

I'm using their developer package (I got a deal on it for half price) and I love it.

ugghh maybe they just blow for their free stuff, but I knew someone who got in on 1and1's free hosting stuff they were offering as a promotional a while back and it sucks, if they just limited the free stuff in my case it was a bad move as I'll not ever use 1and1. Though I must admit 1000Gb for $10/month does sound nice.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

1and1. Been there. Done that. No thank you. There are so many better options out there that will serve you better.

if somebody is getting 1/2 gig in a day all by themselve on a 75 mb site... You can pretty much be sure that is foul play. Basically what they are doing is taking a offline cache program and downloading the same page over and over most likely. I have a couple semi large sites but the 500000+ post forum sites seem to occasionally be the targets of 'forum invasions' from other sites. Basically they try to cache the site to death in hopes of exceeding the bandwidth and making you pay more or taking it offline. There is no rhym or reason to it half of the time... Idiots just find it fun for whatever reason.

Just watch the logs. They are very easy to spot with that much traffic because like you say... "looks like they are refreshing a page over and over". If you see that, just ban them. Eventually they always tire and go away.

Also, If your looking for a host.... Here is one that I use.
http://www.onsmart.com/linux.htm
Basically, my main concern is that they let you have full shell access to your profile/site. OnSmart hasn't ever let me down really. And I have some 1+ gig forum databases running through them with no real problems. I had many problems with large databases on most hosts because of instruction limits. 1on1 is one of them but I don't recall if it was instruction limit problems or just crappy database performance. I've tried quite a few other hosts like powweb. (poweb is freaking awful... never pick them) But most likely your database is small, so most will do... It just depends when or if it gets big. Thats when you have to start being careful. But if you start small and it gets big, you know your going to have to move.

I can mirror on my school webpage server: http://remus.rutgers.edu/~pbaxi
until june '06.

sent you a pm regarding my offer.... i think you'll like it

hmm, 1and1's been great for me and I do a lot of stuff with mysql. Maybe because they are the first site I've gotten into databases with I'm used to this "poor performance." I'm afraid to ask, but what type of performance issues are being referenced? Query times?
Anyway, they have been good for me and I had their free service for the past 2.5 years and I've been happy so the latest time they offered me their $19.99 package for $9.99 I took them up on it. I'm hosting 4 sites and expect some traffic increases to a couple of them and I didn't want to get caught with my pants down... I would have had to go with their $9.99 package eventually anyway (I think for SSI) and I figured I would get my 10 bucks worth...

To each his own. I may check out the listed alternatives if there comes a time that they want to charge me $20/mo for my hosting.

"Also, If your looking for a host.... Here is one that I use.
http://www.onsmart.com/linux.htm "

Dude, $10 a month for 10GB of bandwidth a month? That's a horrible price!

Even if you pay for a whole year you get 50GB of bandwidth a month for $7.50 a month. I'm getting 1500GB of bandwidth from 1and1 for $9.99 a month.

More like 7.50 a month if you pay anually at a consistant 50GB per month of tranfer for any plan. I have no idea where you got 10GB from.

If your going just for price and bandwidth, sure, Onsmart is more expensive. For instance powweb will give you 5gb a day for a lower price. And like you said, 1000GB for 10 bucks a month at 1and1. Your plan is the 19.99 a month plan if he signs up and wants 1500GB. Maybe you got in on a special or maybe your mistaken which plan you have.

However, like I said earlier. I've tried both 1and1 and powweb with large sites after being lured into the bandwidth they offer. It was laughable to say the least at how badly they perform. Been there, done that. IMHO those services are designed for small sites that push crap out like pictures and video's. Anything as long as the server doesn't have to process many requests server side. (they have to make sure they can continue to host 1000 websites per server.) They are so over configured for what you can and can't do that its like trying to host with a crutch.

Nobody says you have to use my suggestion. I don't really care if somebody gets onsmart or not. If 1and1 is working for you... Go for it. I simply couldn't use it with some of my sites. (large forums where everything is mostly running from the database) Onsmart or my own really crappy servers run them wonderfully. But for whatever reason, powweb and 1and1 couldn't keep up with my slowest dual 333mhz computer running mysql/sarge/apache2 on a 1.5mbps push. I think that speaks for itself.

I'm not saying don't get them, for what most people need out of a host they will do that just fine... But if you try to do very much with them, you start seeing things that don't make you very happy.... That is the very essence of why they still have competition. Their target market is small websites, and lots of them. And they do that pretty well.

If you'd like, I can get you a 1GB+ dump for you to meddle with trying to get on their servers without the use of mysql client. Thats for starters. But once you get it there. (it took me about a day constantly running peices at a time to avoid timeouts before I finally managed to get it up there through phpmyadmin) The site ran terrible. If I recall, powweb was the one that had very low hourly instruction limits stopping users from even using the forum half past the hour. And 1and1 I think was just really slow performance. (query times) So slow that people were constantly getting timeouts and internal server errors....

Believe me, I've tried to go with them for the bandwidth. I'm not saying don't get 1and1... I'm just saying it didn't work very well for me because of these issues. And I don't recall what it was with both of them exactly... Both were cancelled with the 30 day money back guarantee. They had wierd configurations for PHP where you weren't allowed to do certian things that you could normally do. Things that I can remember, you couldn't upload via php... I think that was powweb but don't quote me, it could have been 1and1. There was a slew of issues like that. Like extremely low timeout caps. You couldn't use things like gd with php. It was just dumb. You have cron from 1and1 now, I don't remember that being available when I had them over a year ago. I needed that and access to the apache logs for some things I run on it. (referrer spam, log analysis) I couldn't use putenv on either of them. There was just a bunch of things wrong with both of them.

I am going to get my own host, and appreciate all the suggestions and offers. Just to let you know one of the big reasons I'm going with my own host is because my businesses website is right now on 1and1, and we have our ticketing system ( a php mysql system) on it and we get terrible performance with it plus several people are having email problems with the email accounts. I've found what I think is a good plan at a reasonable price that will allow me to have several domains each with their own control panel which I like. The move should happen sometime in the middle of the month, but should be invisible to most. I'm going to leave the old site up since I have a month or two left with them for those isp's like time warner that cache dns lookups for 2+ weeks. The only problem this will create is if you happen to be on one of those isp's any changes you make will not be reflected on the new site, I suppose that is unavoidable.

I really appreciate all the support, and I'm glad the site has become a valuable resource. When I started it over a year ago I wasn't even sure if anyone would use it.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Great news Xsecrets, and thanks again for putting the wiki together in the first place. A one-stop place for instructions and tutorials without having to parse a forum is always great