Hi everyone! A temporarily unemployed software developer here, looking to gain some experience in web technologies while developing a myspace app that my kids would enjoy. After a look, I'm fairly sure I can get myself started with the new languages and the platform and such, but I'm at a loss when it comes to hosting and such issues.

I'm assuming that a low-end shared hosting plan would be sufficient for development and even a few initial users but, of course, I'd actually like this thing to get popular too. If it were to, I don't want to find myself in a pickle facing scalability issues, swapping hosts, or anything else that might cause me or my users grief.

Any suggestions on what I should look for? OS, database, language support, data transfer, etc? Who or what do you use? This would be an interactive app, different from the m.o.b-mafia ilk but of similar complexity.

Thanks for any advice.