Help Help!

[natty]

i've dig and read loads of stuf on webhosting and watnot. most are very informative and help quite a lot. some just makes me more confused and kept going round in circles. dont even remember wat its about.

I'm searching for reliable webhosting to host the website I did for this dental clinic I'm working at. Even tho it's only two thirds done with other stuff to add later on, I want to put it up and running anyway while working on it some more coz our patients have been asking. not the problem.

The trouble is I cant make out how much space and bandwidth it'll really need in the end. I don't want to make the mistake of paying for something I don't need(plus it'll b from clinic fund so... heads WILL roll) by going with a plan that has too much space and the fees to go with it or one that's quite reasonably priced but with actually less space than needed.

neway, the website isnt gonna b like with all those flash thingy and those cool stuff. It's more simple, informative and of course, has to be very accessible and stuff. Quite a bit of images/photos, plus there'll be lotsa articles(dental stuf, etc.), and database stuff.

So any of u people that have more experiences in webbuilding/hosting and cud tell, how much space,etc. do you think I'll need? And maybe a few recommendations so I could check them out?

I shud probably mention that I'm not a webdesigner exactly or anything near that even. it's just that webdesign is interesting to me so I learnd to DIY(er..DIM?) and now I'm doing the website for the clinic BUT I don't know squat about hosting. so haha. Help pls

[fivio]

Hello,

For a normal website. 100MBytes of webspace is enough. However, if you are planning to do photo gallery (who knows you putting client scaling photo for them to see ) then it would be recomended that you choose 1GB plan or over. But, it is very very seldom for a company (dental clinic also) to reach 100Mb mark.

How much if your total website size ?
How much is your visitors ? (target 10% of your total dental client) ?

Thank you,

[genzy]

For the database things, will there be many records? heavily recorded? or just lightweight database? to record purchasing/prescriptions/sales/customer activity with many fields per record?

What kind of features/functionalities planned?

[michaelfoo]

And probably you can state your budget here as well

Thanks.

[natty]

hi fivio thanx for the quick reply. yes I am planning to put up lots of photos i.e. a few for each type of treatment (which is quite a lot actually).

dear genzy,

I'm not sure. It shoudn't be heavy(mayb) coz it'll b like for online appt form and also each patient would be able to access their dental treatment record(more work.. ceh). but it's just for their info, we won't b doing e-payment stuf. the clinic startd early this year so currently we only have about 300 existing patients and increasing.

hey michael, good q, I forgot about that. I'm thinking 100/below per annum. Important thing is that it's reliable, technical support-wise and enough bandwidth for the web, probably not so much downtime thing(of all the reviews I've come across it seems all of them hosting company would have this problem, it's normal I guess? C, I dont know crap) oh and at least one/two email.

[natty]

Oh yes I forgot. Really sorry it took me this long to reply. Work work and no access int. at home. Finally stole my bro's pc time zhahaha.

[fivio]

Hello there,

As for your visitors, you can expect 20% of them will be online. It won't be 100% of your client will online at home. Unless you do online registration

As for the photo, I would recomend a 1GB package rather than 100MB. But, it depend on your photo size too.

Start small. You can always always always upgrade to something bigger (most hoster love to upgrade client package). So, choose the best within your budget and whe it got popular, upgrade your hosting.

Thank you,

[CommunityZ]

If you have forum then prepare to get a bigger plan and plan that doesn't limit your database size. vBulletin need lots of space. Discuz very little only. PHPbb 2 average

[natty]

Alright cool. Thanks y'all for the info, it's been a great help. I've been looking around some more for the right hosting plan for the website (CURSE you indecisiveness!!) and I'll let u guys know. Lotsa thnx!

[natty]

what do u people think about Smartteam?
I'm considering the 98rm/year value hosting that they have. 1000mb. Apparently unlimited monthly data transfer. 10 MySQL db. Mail.

Have any of u people used their service before or heard anything about them?

any info would b great thnx.