Need Help Building Websites... Any Advice Can Help

If he is going to host that many sites he might be better off going with a Virtual Private Server (VPS). With VPS one will have root / admin access to what looks like their own personal server, even though multiple virtual servers will be hosted on the same physical hardware.

VPS hosting starts at about $20 per month for a Linux server, and usually about $10 more per month for Windows. MS SQL server may be extra if that is the desired DBMS. Generally bandwidth and diskspace will not be a problem for hosting Drupal, but one will find that they quickly start running out of memory. The minimal account will usually come with only 256 MB of memory. I think 512MB is probably the bare minimum to host multiple Drupal sites, which will run more like $35 - $40 per month (Linux, again Windows may be $10 or so more).

One of the advantages of VPS is that if more resources (memory, bandwidth, disk space) are needed due to popularity of the sites, it is generally very easy to upgrade the VPS service without having to port the sites or even incur any significant down time.

The down side is, it requires a greater level of server knowledge to use a VPS. If using Linux, one needs to be comfortable with doing everything from the command line, shelling in with ssh, etc. Installing Drupal is now fairly easy. On most Linux distros there is an option for installing the "LAMP stack", which is Linux, Apache (Web Server), MySQL (DBMS) and PHP (web language), and is perfect for Drupal. Several distros, such as Ubuntu, have pre build packages for Drupal making the installation and setting up of Drupal a snap. Everything for supporting Drupal on Linux is of course open source, which means it is free as in free beer.

On Windows, one similarly needs to install (Internet Information Server) IIS or Apache (web servers), MySQL and PHP in order to run Drupal.

Among other things needing to be addressed are multi-homing (host headers), which is a means of getting multiple sites to run from a single IP address. Typically only one or two fixed IP addresses will be provided with a minimal VPS package, thus all sites will need to share those few IP addresses.

A local mail server may also be needed for sending emails when people register and any other function requiring the sending of emails. Other services may also need to be installed which Drupal simply provides an interface to (mailing lists, Galleries, etc.).

Handling money directly, such as through Drupal's Ubercart, will require setting up certificates, secure sockets (SSL) and a fair number of other complexities. Unless a lot of e-commerce is needed, it is generally easier to get this through third party "stores" such as those available through Yahoo, Google, or Quickbooks (Intuit), to name a couple.

Make sure to look into how to run multiple Drupal sites from a single server. It requires more work setting up, but does reduce the ongoing maintenance. A good Drupal book is highly recommended.

Lastly, a good thing to do is to set up a "Sandbox". Set up a computer like the VPS host and load everything to it. If desired, dynamic DNS (search for dyndns) can be used to make the sites visible to the outside world, even over residential Cable, DSL, FIOS, etc. It will likely require adding a tunnel (sometimes called port forwarding) in the router. This will also allow testing of changes or new features to the sites without having the risk associated with doing them on the live server.

Enough for now.

Regards,
Eric

for example:

http://www.fedponzi.com