Web Hosting

Anyone have any suggestions for a good/cheap web hosting company? I want to setup a personal page just to mess around with and host pictures and maybe play around with scripting and stuff. I think something on a Linux server with a MySQL database and allows php and perl and all that is what I need. I would also need something were I can control permissions on the directories and files. So how does this work anyway? Do i just get a login to a directory structure where I can mess around? What is a good bandwith limit? I searched google, but found a ton of companies so I'm not sure which ones to look at. Maybe the ads that will show up on this thread will point me in the right direction :)

Also if anyone has any tips or suggestions for security or maintanence or anything else please feel free to share.

i had good luck with ipowerweb

7 something a month gives you 30Gb transfer, 500MB space plus an SQL server, PHP and all the CGI goodies

I love using freewebs.com Its free and you get 40GB of free space, to host anything you want at all. BUt I think the maximum is 50 objects or something. Try it out

Whoops, I meant to say 40 MB. lol, 40 GB would be about the storage I have on my laptop!

^ haha Ok that makes more sense. 40GB is a ton to give away free. I might have used that place before though. I'm made so many cheap websites for one reason or another I can't remember every where I've been. I'm hoping to get more experience with a real web hosting company though so I can move into the online web business market or maybe even do web page design once I get more experienced with this stuff.