I'm not a web host nor do I pretend to be one.. I do however have a few small sites I have on my home DSL, mostly for me to play around. I have a couple friends that do the same and we're thinking of getting a low-end ded. server to do so. (We're all college students and we like tinkering so we're not big on shared hosting..)

Looking around has got me thinking.... How do you know how much load (cpu, memory, etc) a server can handle? There's a huge range in price between different cpu's, amount of ram, etc. Besides learning from your mistakes, is there a basic calculation? I know this is hard to tell because static pages take much much less than scripted sites.. So how do you guess?

It is a guesstimate, with a couple of vital clues: traffic, server software, script quality. If you're not getting 500+ visitors a day, then chances are that a bottom-barrel dedicated server would do you just fine. If you're running Linux/BSD, then your resource management will probably be a bit more efficient on lower end hardware than Win2k. Get whatever RAM you can afford... If your scripts run away from you and eating RAM, having extra RAM available will buy you some time to get in there and fix things before things crawl to a halt.

If you want to host outside of your home, ask the providers on your consideration list if they'll let you upgrade for the price difference between the old and new servers. You'd be surprised at what you can get if you ask the right way. ;)

George