I plan to launch a rather simple site with not a lot of content, maybe 1/2 of this forum, but want to plan for lots of traffic What sort of hosting setup should I be on the hunt for? Thanks, Duce
dedicated might be overkill, try vps first or a good shared host. VPS would be my choice as it will be much easier to move your site to a dedicated host later on if your site does get big.
i would go with a good VPS that would have at the very lease some good disk space, large amount of bandwidth and good CPU strength.
Don't underestimate this forum, even half as much traffic will kill any dedicated server. Have a look here: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/digitalpoint.com
I'd recommend a VPS, most VPS hosts can scale the resources on your VPS as you need them. So you can start small, and grow your VPS as your traffic and load grows.
Its completely on type of traffic. But a shared hosting can handle the forum initially, then move onto a VPS or dedicated once your host starts peeping out about your website using much resources.
VPS is probably the best option for growth. Here's a list of good value managed vps hosting plans http://www.hostingdiary.com/2007/09/best-vps-hostin.html Andrew
As your site is new you can try going with shared hosting, no need to ride an leopard when you are hunting for an tortoise. Once you start getting good traffic then you can consider for going for VPS or Dedicated.
I would strongly recommend a VPS. You can generally find VPS's for cheap and when the times comes to upgrade to a dedicated server it will be alot easier to go from a VPS to a dedicated server.