can someone explain webhosting to me

[Papercuts]

I've never understood webhosting and I have three seperate projects in the works, each with diff Domain names. Do I need to buy hosting for each or do these plans im finding on 1and1, godaddy etc let me host all from the same storage space? am i making sense even?

[Clay]

Every host offers different things - you need to do your research, email their support etc and get your questions answered BEFORE signing up.

Some will do what you want, some will claim they do what you want - but in reality its just a workaround (sub-folder system or something) etc.

Make sure you can use email with all domains (some let you host multiple sites - but only 1 domain can have email)

[Clay]

If you plan on having more and more sites - and want to manage them properly - go with a VPS. (virtual private server)

For this - I would recommend Liquid Web. I have a VPS and a big-assed server with them. They rule.

[standard]

right to what clay said.

or if you find a good cheapo deal, you can do domain name forwards.

ie you have papercuts.com, then sitenumbertwo.com could be set up in godaddy or whatever to forward to a subfolder on your website (say, papercuts.com/SN2/ ) and so on etc.

I was set up like that for a long time before moving to mediatemple. broken-lines.com used to forward to standard-design.com/broken-lines/

[Papercuts]

Thanks, i need to educate myself, its like a foreign language.

So to get this straight yeah if i have two seperate domain names i can host them under the same plan because I can essentially forward one domain to a subfolder under the original domain?

[Clay]

Like I said - every host is different. Some let you set up multiple accounts, others don't.

The proper way is a VPS .. but there are workarounds to make it work on cheap single hosting accounts.

[braksandwich]

I would go with Media Temple. I've found they offer the most flexibility for a developer. They are not the cheapest though.

[Clay]

I would go with Media Temple. I've found they offer the most flexibility for a developer. They are not the cheapest though.

As a developer, I would disagree. They have the most non-standard, custom-written, piece of crap admin control panel I have ever used.

Once everything is set up, its ok - but what a pain in the ass.

[ferg2001]

i love the admin panel they have. way user friendly.

[thenailmc]

I'm currently running a few pretty decent traffic sites on a one Mediatemple account, they rule.