Excellent suggestions in this thread so far. For newbies, I would always recommend a monthly contract with any provider to make sure you are happy with their services. Through the years, I have personally had several hosting companies that I was with and they ranged from really bad to fly by night, some disappeared, and a few were really good. So I guess I have seen it all.

Nowadays, as my organization is a host itself amongst many other things, we host our own sites. How can it get better than that? If I have a hosting complaint, I can only complain to myself!