I'm assume this is a well-worn topic here, but I'm brand new. If anybody would care to point me to a good tutorial on the pros/cons of paying for a dedicated IP v using a shared one, I'd appreciate it. Feel free to share your opinion too if you want. I know you need it for a commercial site, which mine won't be, at least not for a while. And I THINK you need it for anonymous FTP, which I may want in a while. But is it important/valuable for other reasons?

Thanks,
lateron

You need a dedicated IP for your own SSL or Anom. FTP.
Otherwise, there's really no reason why you would need one.

However, it may be tricky for your webhost to move your site to dedicated IP at a later time, so make sure you ask them on how transfering in the future will be..

This should go in the "questions asked a million and one times forum".

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26203

I'm sure it has been asked over and over, that's why I just asked for a lead to some discussion about it. Thanks for providing it, I appreciate it. Though the discussion linked is pretty inconclusive about whether it's worth having or not.

I'm sure there are lots more treatments of the issue around, more detailed and thorough, if I want to do a little searching. But I guess it doesn't matter in my case, since I want anonymous ftp, so that means I need dedicated apparently.
lateron

as for anonymous FTP you can still use PHP for uploading files.