I have apotential web developer that can host my site but I am looking into scripts etc and they offer hosting as well. the question is, how much does hosting affect your site? Can a certain host be better for your site than others?
Of course hosting can affect your site performance, and some servers will not be configured to run certain scripts. You'll have to be a lot more specific on what scripts you are talking about and the amount of traffic the site will be getting. Hosting runs from free to hundreds of dollars and up - and you usually get what you pay for. Smaller sites can be fine on shared hosting, others will need a VPS or dedicated server.
Hosting is the major factor that affects your site in many ways. You can't run some softwares in some hosting. Some hosting plans won't allow you to use more domains in single account. Some hosting plans restrics no. of subdomains allowed. If we should list the hosting uses, oh .. there are many. Choose the best one as per your site requirements.
Yes, hosting plays a big part of your website. Most shared hosting environment don't allow you to host videos/file hosting sites. Not only that, poorly coded script will result in hogging system resources, which will get you suspended.