Hellos to all... A bit of a background on what I am trying to accomplish. I am a water polo coach for a great group of high school age girls. I need to establish a website where interested athletes can go and learn about our program. I also wish to have multiple pages that cover club news, photo pages, calendar, a few email addresses, a mailing group, etc... I did set up such a site on homestead, but then they went un-free on me. That is okay though because we are to the point in our development where we require a more professional site and domain name. I need help in what to look for in a host, one that is very affordable, yet reliable. I will be designing, setting up and maintaining this all by myself.. and yes, you guessed it.. I have no background whatsoever other than using the "helper" program that homestead furnished. Is there a program that I can use that will not make me insane? I don't mean to intrude on your domain here, I know I am way out of my league but don't know where else to go for some solid advice. Any and all of your input will be so appreciated... by both the girls and myself!

Thank you!

Try http://www.gearhost.com/

I heard gearhost offer a lot of services, and I checked out their site, and their plans are cheap........ :D

Before you go jumping on to "gearhost" you should do the research. The net's a big place with a lot of information, do some searches on google (http://www.google.com) to see what's best for you because there are many choices when it comes to web hosting (for example: Windows or UNIX?). You also need to do some research on some of the many web hosting companies... you can do this here, Host Search (http://www.hostsearch.com), FindSP (http://www.findsp.com), or Web Host Dir (http://www.webhostdir.com).

You might like to look at http://oneandone.co.uk
They give away a ton of free programs including Netobjects Fusion which is a very easy to learn site building program. They also seem to have a page making system built in.

Wherever you go for hosting, pick a host with a lot of "goodies" built in. That is, if the host has a forum that can be installed with one click it will save you a lot of grief trying to set one up yourself.

Flame,
Since you are fairly new to all of this, i would recommend that you go with a host that has very good support. There will probably be many questions you will need to ask along the way, so dont just go for the cheapest host out there.........There are many good hosts out there, but there are also plenty of terrible ones..........

For developing your site, you might want to have a look at webmonkey.com, that is generally a good place to start out......

good luck..........

And here is a good forum where you can ask for help http://www.sitepointforums.com/
This forum is mostly about hosting but Sitepoint covers a lot of other subjects as well.