web hosting advice

satrading

Hi there,
i know im on the wrong forum but i was not able to get a new thread option on the the web hosting forum for some reason!
Im trying to set up a small website for my small budding company, im relatively new to web tools but am confident about starting this project, im familiar with xhtml, dreamweaver and some dynamic stuff (ie. php).
So im not worried with coming to terms with the technical implementation of the site.
But i would really apreciate it if any of ye could give me some advice:
My situation is as follows- im involved with a new start up company and as part of marketing we would like to have a website. As a start we would be happy with a static website which basically just displayed our products and gave contact details etc. (not so hard i know), but as the company is just starting out we would like to have other options availible to us in time (ie. six months down the line) where we could incorporate a database of products linked with the website and maybe an online shop etc. My question now is if i go online and purchase a domain name and get a web host and set up my basic website, can i in a few months down the line incorporate the other stuff outlined above- online shop where customers can buy products by credit card, or would the hosting company require me to set up a completely new package from scratch ie. new rates etc.
Other questions i have would be is the ecommerce part of a website a servcie which can be provided by the hosting company in a package as a black box as it where so that it runs by it self and i dont have to know how it works or implement anything to support it, other than maybe a database containing list of available products which it is possible to purchase. I have noticed a few web hosting companies which have microsoft frontpage 2002 compatibility would this also mean it would have basic dreamweaver compatibility? Please comment on any of the above and feel free to name any suitable hosting companies.
Regards,
Sean.
P.S .sorry for the length of my message.

EricM

All hosts have dreamweaver compatibility.
Dreamweaver just uses regular FTP, nothing special is required on the host side.

Frontpage will also work with any webhost, but some special functions require the host to have the Frontpage Extensions.
I wouldnt reccomend using frontpage extensions anyway, better to use PHP to do all your dynamic stuff.

For hosting see: www.hostultra.com
Whether you would have to upgrade your package for ecommerce depends on the host, if you use the one i suggested above you wont have to upgrade anything.

Also, you should know that to accept credit cards in real-time from your website requires a "internet gateway" and a merchant account, if you have a (physical offline) store which accepts credit cards you already have merchant account but you need to get the gateway details from the bank which provides your merchant account.
The webhost would not be able to set this part up, you need to do that yourself.
Of course, you can always make your website store the credit card number in a database and key them in manually.