To get a website up and running you need two things: a domain name and a webhost to upload your pages to. Oh, and some good ideas.
Actually, none of those are essential. There's a surplus of sites on the web with not a good idea behind them, and you can quickly set up a free site on wordpress.com, blogger.com or another provider. But for the purposes of this article I'll assume you want a fully hosted site with your own domain name (ie www.yoursite.com).
This article's all about the hosting. All hosting companies have varying features, but the key things are probably uptime (reliability) and speed. They'll also offer an array of features, and it's worth having a think about your needs before you take the plunge.
Disclaimer: the following is from my own experience as a Dreamhost user. It's not meant to be a plug for the company, but I've not used any other. Hey ho.
Dreamhost features
These are all available on the DH website, so I won't bother repeating them. Suffice to say, I'm happy with the level of service - they've always responded promptly, helpfully and friendly to my requests. They have great customer service - all companies should be like this.
They offer a 97-day money back guarantee on new accounts, so it's easy enough to give them a go. Oh, and they have an affiliate scheme, so any member can either get 10% forever of everything their referrals spend on hosting (plus 5% for the people they refer), or a one-off $97 payment. Click here if you want to sign up and give me a kickback (ah, go on).
I'd used Dreamhost since my first personal website launched in 2000. I can't remember why I originally chose them - I think it was based on a Yahoo! search and a good price, rather than a word of mouth recommendation.
Now, a couple of things about Dreamhost. Firstly, the cheaper plans are for shared hosting environments, which mean your site will be on the same server as a number of other users'. If one site is undergoing a severe traffic spike or something goes wrong, it may bring down other sites on that server.
DH are far from the only hosting company to use shared servers, and for the vast majority of time it works fine. People tend to say that if your site is mission critical (ie you can't deal with any downtime or your business will suffer) you should ignore the cheapo $6 per month plan and go for a dedicated server of your own. If you're at that level you're unlikely to be reading this.
Another thing to mention is that Dreamhost, like other companies, oversell the space on their shared servers, with the assumption that most people don't use their full capacity. They explain it here. The policy makes sense. Again, the caveat applies that if your site simply cannot deal with any outside influences such as these, you should probably go for something a bit more hi-spec.
The only (fortunately minor) problem I've had with Dreamhost was an incident in January 2008 when they inadvertently billed their users a total of $9,600,000 (!), although only a quarter of that was actually charged to people's accounts (phew). It was documented in the company's blogs (start from the entry titled Um, Whoops and read upwards).
They didn't actually charge me, but others claim to be out of pocket. Whether this was true or if they just wanted a moan I don't know (some of the comments are hilariously angry), but the company promised to put right all problems. It seems, however, that DH lost out financially as a result, though they took it on the chin.
Anyway, that's my experience. Your mileage may vary, and I'm sure there are other companies that are snapping at DH's heels. Sorry if this sounds like a plug - I only have one experience to draw on, but it's been good for me.