Web Hosting & Domain Registration?

Hello brave travellers of the intraweb.

I need to build a website. I'm pretty comfortable with site building but haven't clue one about hosting. Or domain registration. You know, like the title says.

I'm looking for advice from intrepid intrawebbians who have bought their own domains. Like, say, the makers of ZU. Or links to resources online that'll help. Or ... pie.

Any price range in mind?

Cheap as I can get it.

It's essentially going to be a portfolio site. A few dozen links to images, that sort of thing.

http://www.xmgfree.com/testimonials.php

Try this, I havn't used it but it is free and I was recomended it.

If you want reliable hosting then I don't reccomend free.. It's easy to get really cheap, decent hosting for seriosuly low prices, like $4 or $5, and your site's in much safer hands, is up more often, more space, etc. Anyway I use http://www.oneandone.co.uk for my domain and http://ineedhosting.net/ for hosting, so check them both out. Also you can easily pay off hosting costs with google ads.

Thanks for the links - currently investigated. I should note that I live in Canada, and would prefer Canadian hosting, but this is a really good start.

Any more advice etc. is welcomed and appreciated.

I highly recommend Dreamhost. They've been around "forever," and came highly recommended from co-workers as well.

I recently switched from a $100 US/month dedicated box to their Code Monster shared server plan with Dreamhost. It meant losing freedom, but I've found them to be just as reliable, and the pricing is pretty awesome. It ended up costing me $300 US up front for 2 years after discount codes, and comes with a free domain registered for one year.

If you do consider going with them, try googling for discount codes. There're a lot of easily-discovered ones that really bring the price down.

It really depends if you have a small or high budget. If you do want domain hosting, be willing to fork out around 10 dollars per year. FOr the site, you might want a large hosting, depeding what you want to host.