1) Make sure the price is right - eco-budgetting advice. Prices for web-hosting services vary from just a few pounds for one year to hundreds or thousands, depending on level of service offered.
2) Check to find out what kind of on-site advertising is obligatory, and what is allowed for your site. If your web-host allows other sites hosted to display illicit material, you would also be subscribing if it turns out to be dangerous. It is a matter of basic courtesy and web-etiquette to have anti-virus technology installed on your own computer.
3) Find out whether a file manager with uploading facility is provided by the web-host, otherwise you may find yourself having to work out incomplete FTP details with no standard instructions and no files for the site visible. If you can only upload one file at a time, that tends to make site upgrades and maintenance a strainful and oppressive tedium.
4) Find out whether all services you need, such as CGI scripts, will be provided. If not, it may be possible for another web-service provider to help, either free, or for a small fee.
5)
Try to make your site attractive, relevant in terms of services, and addressed to real
problems of our time. A few eco-links to and from the site would help, but meta-tags are
also important for search-engines to find your site. Web-communication being
international, it is probably best if the scripts and programming languages used are
those which have been found to be basicly of value and generally browser-acceptable.