Hello, I'm trying to find a good, easy to use, and an inexpensive blog host for my news site. Any suggestions? - It must give a professional look to my site. Thanks!
Im with 5 Quid Host currently, no problems, good support, nice range of lplans let you start small and work up as you need to.
How does a host "give professional look to my site"? HostGator is okay, they are cheap and as good as anyone in that range. Rochen is a better host http://www.rochenhost.com/ and you don't pay much more. I can gaurntee you there is not such think as unlimited bandwidth or unlimited disk space... it's an advertising gimmick... push the limits on a shared server and you'll get the "you need to upgrade" messages.
professional look is based on your design, nothing to do with hosting. Hosting gives u the bandwith, space and scripts to run the website.
You sound as though you're looking for a blogging platform, not a host. Somewhere like Blogger or Wordpress.com. Personally, I wouldn't bother with places like that. Buy yourself a domain name and get it hosted. You'll end up with a better name for your blog and more control. Use Wordpress (Wordpress.org not Wordpress.com) which is free software and is pretty easy to learn. I set up my first blog in half a day from knowing nothing!
Wordpress is by far the best in my opinion. Their software is free, you just pay for hosting. There are so many templates that you can use. You can make it look virtually any way you want. Hosting is a neccesity if you want the professional look. Having yourname.com looks so much better than yourname.whateverhost.com. It's all about branding yourself. Good luck! Michael Kelly