Well, I guess I'll start with an explaination. I've been hosting my Excel Saga website through a free host called Angeltowns for a while now. Earlier this week, however, I clicked on my site to find that the entire thing had been deleted without notice and that the free hosting was no longer going on thanks to phishers. >< So yeah, I no longer have my Excel Saga site and I now need a new home for it.

Luckily for me, I think I may finally have the money to buy a domain and host for both my regular site (which is being hosted through a friend) and the ExS one. The only problem is where to start and who to buy from. Does anyone here have any suggestions? Thank you very much in advance!

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"My Mom stole my boyfriend!"
"Your boyfriend stole my wife! Let's get back at them by dating each other! Wait a second. Daddy didn't think that one through."

Crystalline Academy -- Personal website.
My DeviantArt Gallery

I'm not used to domain buying and stuff, but I think you might want to try Yahoo!'s service if you want to buy a domain name. You can access it here. I do not know about any other services that offers domain names. As for a host for your sites, I wouldn't be sure about that though.

As for the sudden deletion of your website, sorry to hear about that. It's a little unjustified for that to happen.

Anyway, good luck!

That is the reason I moved on from free hosting - they have every right to delete your stuff at will, since you're not paying for their services.

First I went with a small hosting place and got my domain from them but they went down and died a while ago... Annoying.

So I did research and tried one of the top name's in hosting Pair.com and they were helpful etc. but I couldn't get used to their panel system and database management etc... And I didn't want to have to spend the little time I have trying to work things out (a different panel system also meant complications with transferring my stuff...). But they were great people, quickly responded to my cancellation and refunded me. So I still think they're a good place, just I was really short on time so I just wanetd somewhere I could transfer my stuff quickly and get on with it...

Currently I'm with clook.net who I also researched as being a good solid place and I haven't been dissapointed.
I think I got my account in January. And I have had zero problems... No need for support because I've not had anything to say. Just good solid service. They use the same easy to use panel system that I'd gotten used to so it was a painless transfer for me. Not noticed any downtime or database downtime that I got with my first host.

As for domain, I reccomend using GoDaddy.com for that instead of wherever you might buy hosting from. They seem to be the top place to go for domain registration. Also... if you aren't someone who's keen on having your information online (which happens with domain registration using WhoIs lookup... it's so that people or companies can contact you if they want to offer money for your domain name), you can ask them for it to be private. In which case they'll just put their own information.
As you can see my personal information doesn't come up on a WhoIs lookup: http://xwhois.com/default.asp?domain=crossrealms.net

When looking for hosting by the way, you may notice there's different types...
Shared Hosting is most likely what you want. Which is your basic hosting account.
You can also get Reseller type accounts which basically is like becoming a web-hosting company where you can actively host other websites, although some people would get such an account because of the more advanced control over things.

A good place to go for information on webhosting, and this is where I did my research, is:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com

If you find the name of a webhost and want to know more about them just use the forum Search at that place and see whetehr people have discussed it there.

Best of luck.

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- -- --- Alien 9 / Alien Nine Unofficial Website - Since November 2003 --- -- -

I'm not sure which hosting companies are best and all that, but surpasshosting.com hosts my site scarlet-reverie.net. It was around... $48 or so for the yearly plan though. :x And it was confusing to set up at first.

Dpnds on what you want to do. (Iv' lost us of a ky for a whil s my post in post your dsktop for mor info on it.) Wolfpaw.com will happily host largr wbsits with hug data transfrs and nds for largr spacs. bit xpnsiv though.