Me and a few other artists here are considering starting a new 3D site. We would like to have a users gallery there simalar to ReRo. What I'm asking is for those have have sites like this, what kind of Web Space and Bandwidth would you need? Any reconmendation on web Hosts? Any advise at all would be great. Thanks, -Dave

I ran a guest gallery for a while on one of my wallpaper sites. I only linked to guest wallpapers - the artist hosted both the thumbs and images on their own servers. I found this worked very well and didn't cost me anything :-) You'll find quite a few guest galleries work this way.

I host at [Canaca.com I prepaid for two years at $16.95 a month. They threw in a free year. I get 30 gigs of space and 600 GB a MONTH in bandwidth. That is not a typo - 600 gigs a month.

Neeless to say, I have no problems. :)

](http://www.canaca.com)

We have one site at lypha.com
Very good service usually within a few hours.
We have 1Gb space and 150Gb transfers/month. $6.95/month
All kinds of "addons" you may wish are included.
If/when bandwidth becomes slow they directly give you more.

Bandwidth needs are related to content. You could run a site dedicated to renders of filing cabinets with the minimum amount of bandwidth provided by your ISP. The more the contributed work tends towards the "glamour" end of things, the higher the bandwidth requirements are likely to be.

One of the problems you are going to run into is that some services wont host sites that have nude images - even if they are tasteful and artistic nudes. There is a movement away from that right now. If you are going to offer merchandise for sale, you will also have to contend with PayPals restrictions (or those of any alternate payment service you select). I run a site with mildly adult content that gets about 2,000 hits per day, so bandwidth is a big issue for me - as well as having an open-minded hosting company. I strongly recommend Cheapbandwidth.com. They supply my considerable bandwidth needs as a low cost, their service has been superior, and they dont care what I put up on my site. Best of luck in your endeavor - sounds like wonderful fun! --Invidia

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I recommmend Dreamhost. (www.dreamhost.com) The plans are affordable ans scalable, and their support team is fantastic. They also give access to lots of site licenses, a large Knowledge Base, etc. Check them out.

2000 hits a day...what does that translate into as far as bandwidth? my host offers 1gig storage and 20gig download..I've never taxed it as no one goes to my site :) they do allow nudity, by the way

Dave-So, I just checked my stats and I went through 24 gigs of transfer in November. I'm on pace to pass that up for December. It's a LOT of bandwidth. But the BEST thing about Cheapbandwidth.com is that they are never down. Never. Not in the years I've been with them. That's saying something! Cheers, --Invidia

My %@#$!'ing session timed out after typing out a lengthy (and informative) post on this so here's the highlights. ;)

An erotic gallery will put you at 500meg to 1 gig of traffic.....a day. I speak from experience with a site that has only been up a couple months now.

Canaca will host any legal content... as long as it doesn't exceed %10 of the server machine's resources. An art site will easily surpass that. Almost all hosting sites have a clause similar to this, read the AUP or FAQ. If you don't see it, call and ask.

I couldn't find the hosting info at cheapbandwidth.com, just searches of other sites offering hosting. Where is the hosting info pertaining to cheapbandwidth.com exactly?

The best place to ask any other hosting-related questions is a web hosting forum. Try http://www.webhostingtalk.com, a wealth of information. You can read host reviews, check prices, look for server sales, etc.

Good luck! :)

I've been doing a lot of research on the subject lately for a work project and I agree that webhostingtalk.com is probably one of the best resources out there. To me, it sounds like you might want to start with a virtual dedicated and then move up to a real dedicated when you get the traffic. A lot of times people think they need more traffic than they do at the start and you don't want to pay for bandwidth you aren't using.

Canaca kind of bothered me with that clause about the 10% and the fact that they will not refund your money if they decide you are in violation of it would make it kinda hard to prepay. They also have an unfavorable rating with the better business bureau in Canada.

As for a webhost, I'm not totally sure myself. I have gotten major headaches trying to weed through the rhetoric in trying to find one. To the point, where I wonder how anyone gets hosting anymore. Talk about a confusopoly. But the best advice is to make sure whatever web host you go with that you are clear on the policies before you sign. Find out what their uptime policy is, their Acceptable Use Policy, their bandwidth limits (including their server load limits) and how much extra bandwidth is, their reputation, how long they've been in business, and what is included (managed, not managed (which is cheaper), any PHP/MySQL/C++ compatibility you might need for whatever apps will run on the site).

http://cheapbandwidth.com ----Cannot find server or DNS Error

If your intent is to make a site that offers other similar features as this one, I'm afraid that the only way you could possibly afford the bandwidth costs, both content-wise and download-wise, would be to run your OWN server. I once had three freestuff items here that were relatively small by filesize standards (under 1MB each). I exceeded the 25GB limit for downloads in 3 weeks.

Message edited on: 12/08/2004 09:52