Would appreciate any assistance in finding an affordable (<$250 mo), reliable, high bandwidth (100-150 GB) host for my site.

I've just launched a site that incorporates QTVR to tour San Francisco. My first 30 days used 25+ GB bandwidth and growing. Peak day (last friday) had 4500 visitors, 25,000 this month so far.

My current host has a 50 GB per month maximum, so I need to find another soon.

My first site - artist/designer not tech. oriented, produced w/Adobe GoLive on Mac.

What would you recommend?

Lee Nelson
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illusionart@earthlink.net

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What platform are you interested in?

I am new enought to web site development and hosting to not yet know what I need. That is why I posted here, to hopefully get some advice.

My site is currently hosted at earthlink.net on a unix system. It was developed on a Macintosh with Adobe GoLive. Does that help?

Thanks in advance.

As for the "seeking for a host", try posting in the advertisement section :D
That might be a good idea :D

As for the platform.... Really depends, most likely Unix will do.... What kind of site is it?

Yeah, I figured out that there was an advertising section and have a post there.

Unix seems to be the way to go. The site is (eventually) an advertiser supported way to tour cities, beginning with San Francisco with QTVR. I have over 50 panoramas that I shot, organized by neighborhood, with some great links to additional information and am adding content in the form of visitor submitted reviews of dining, lodging, shopping and entertainment.

Also,

Any advice on how much hardware this site would require, ie. processor speed, memory etc. would be very helpful. Will adding a forum make a major difference?

I feel like I am operating somewhat in the dark trying to make a decision on a host, especially dedicated, when the technology is so out of my range of experience (remember I'm a Mac guy).

So am I right if I say your site is like a book full of pictures?

In that case, you shouldnt really need a lot of system power, just bandwidth depending on the popularity and size of the photos

Yes, moving pictures - QuickTime VR are scrollable and you can zoom in and out.

I provide two sizes to choose for download - small is 200k-600k, large is 1MB-2.5MB. A suprise to me is the larger pano's are by far the most popular. Current size is half what I launched with - I reduced them because bandwidth was going through the roof. Looks like visitors are just looking at more pano's, cause bandwith is going up still.

Go for a virtual server. What's your budget like?

It is looking like I will have to budget $200-250 mo. for that amount of bandwidth. It's a business so would like to keep expenses reasonable to be able to make a profit.

I'm still financing out-of-pocket. As soon as I can stop focusing on switching hosts I should be able to start focusing on turning decent traffic into advertising dollars.