This is an OOOOLD thread! The epilogue, around a month after the original post, was that I got OUT of Netfirms - cutting my losses, as there was no pro rata refund - and went with Bluehost. Let me put it plainly - if you are planning to do ANYTHING except put up a basic HTML site, DO NOT use Netfirms! They are... hmmm... rubbish!! Bluehost are a good choice for anyone beginning in webmastering, with plenty of space, bandwidth, great amount of freedom of configuration of the server etc. and very little downtime, if any. I have no real complaints, especially for under $10 a month, and I am running around 10 (relatively low-traffic) sites on there no problems.