Server for a website...what do I need

[avgeek]

I know I could/should probably post this over on Sitepoint or something, but after lurking here since the dawn of time, I feel a little more comfortable with the folks here.

What I'm working on is a site where each church's would have their own page within the site. The church could feed live audio (possibly video at some point) to rebroadcast via the website and also upload audio and video to store as archived material.

I speculate that most churches aren't going to have more than 5-10 people watching/listening on Sundays, but I could see many more pulling up the archived content and downloading or watching/listening online. Also, our advertising is going to be local only until all the bugs are worked out, so we won't be dealing with hundreds of churches any time soon.

What do I need to look for in the way of servers for hosting something like this and what kind of scalability do I need as we bring more churches on board? I have done some research into leasing a dedicated server, but I have just enough knowledge in server...ing...to be really dangerous.

Thanks for your input

[Benito Fireslinger]

i recommend:

rimuhosting
eapps
rackspace

you probably will want dedicated but it can cost big money. Definitely need large amounts of bandwidth if you plan on transfering audo/video files. And a good connection for streaming.