Master your apps

While a standard host with a large amount of disk space and a few fast machines is adequate for static HTML pages, certain sites will make greater demands on the host's CPU and will consequently run slower - and slow down every other site on the server as well. Streaming video and audio, discussion forums and message boards, online surveys, and high-level animation all require huge amounts of memory and fast access to the main server. If you can't afford a dedicated or collocated server, at least find one that has experience in integrating these more complex elements.