Hosting Questions

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So, I'm having this fleeting flight of fancy that I'd like to set up a forum, the problem being that as a fleeting flight of fancy, I don't really want to pay very much money for hosting in case the fancy flitters away Plus I'm kinda broke, so yeah, what I'm asking about is cheap hosting that isn't super****.

I have no idea how much disk space and bandwidth a small forum requires (small being the size of, well, all those other tiny communities that spring up briefly online for about six months and then die as people drift off - you can tell I have high expectations, can't you? ), any thoughts on that? There may or may not be a larger website attached to it, but I can't really think of anything that I'd put on it, so forum is the main thought.

Domain name - how much should I be expecting to pay here?

All googling seems to do is give me reams and reams of companies trying to sell me 'really really cheap!!!!' domain names/hosting - it's rather hard to tell, well, anything really. Some nice, calm, non-hyped opinions by people who know what they're talking about would be greatly appreciated.

For instance - would this (cheapest option) suit my needs? Or would it be worthwhile to go for something like this - a bit more expensive but looking significantly better. Anyone have suggestions for other companies? - those were just the two most likely looking I found via googling.

It's entirely likely that I'll get over this before actually doing anything (evidence for that; I do the same thing about every six months or so... ), but hey, I'm motived enough to create a thread about it this time, so it can't be all bad

 

There are some pretty good hosts that come in at less than $5/month, but the catch is that you can only get rates like that if you commit to a year or two years worth of hosting. As for registering the domain name, most hosts will throw it in for free or neglible cost with a hosting contract.

As cheap as disk space and bandwidth are these days, I doubt you'll find a plan that's incapable of running small forums.

 

As Tal said, with a SPS account, you get web hosting and a database. I installed the free PHP Nuke forums on my site, but half-way though setting it up, I lost intrest of having a forums... Who would waste time on my forums when they're being hosted by the BoM?

 

Go with SPS, seriously. It's already hard to find such hosting for that kind of money and you can't overestimate the bonus of actually knowing your host, let alone it being someone so dependable.