Blogs or any type of online communication forums such as real time chats or asynchronous forums will need specialized program support. Most web hosts offering these features will use specialized scripting such as PHP or Perl/CGI as well as a SQL type database. A web designer or planner can help you determine the specifications you will need in a web hosting service.
Many web designers will make recommendations to a specific web hosting company, or may actually provide web hosting services. Referrals are a great way to find out what is available but it is still a good idea to do some cost and feature comparisons.
Bandwidth is an important consideration in choosing a web hosting service. Even with small sites it can be very frustrating to customers to keep getting errors and messages when they try to access your site. Bandwidth is critical in larger sites with features such as forums, chats, blogs or sites that will be getting large numbers of hits per day.
