That's actually a very good question and well it all really depends on your needs.
Anyways here's some questions that I think you can ask yourself, and then this may help you with asking more specific questions to help narrow your search down for the host that's right for you.
Your website:
It looks like you've got the first step figured out about what you need for your website.
The tools for your website:
It looks like you need a few things that may not come with alot of hosting plans, but are you able to install and manage these things yourself? Or maybe you need to find a host with these things pre-installed, and one that provides support for them, so you can just get to using them right away? Or you would just like to find one that has them pre-installed so you don't have to go through the hassle of installing them, but you're able to manage them and/or willing to learn how.
Support:
How much support are you going to need? Are you going to need 24/7 techincal support. Do you need phone support? Or maybe just help when you need it, with a timely, professional and responsive resolution.
Price and Features:
Do you need a lot of space? Do you need alot of bandwidth? Are you unsure of how much space and bandwith you'll need? If so it may be a good idea to start out with a lower cost plan and learn from there.
How much can you afford for hosting? Are you able to upgrade from one plan to the next if needed? You said you are going to want to give some of your space away to some of your friends. You'll probably want to check and see if the host is offering subdomains and how many they're offering, and also check their terms of service and acceptable usage policies to see if there's anything in there that wouldn't allow you to do this.
Uptime:
Is your site going to be a mission critical site where every second of downtime equals lost revenue? If so you're probably going to be paying a high price. Is it going to be more of personal site where 100% uptime isn't to important you, but you just want it to be avilable the majority of the time. You can probably pay less for this, but you never really know for sure. Just because a host has an uptime guarantee doesn't mean that you will actually have your website up that much of the time. Every host will have some downtime once in a while. Does your host have an uptime guarantee? Will they give you a refund if they don't meet that uptime guarantee? This usually takes requesting the refund. 99.5% and up is excellent uptime for a host.
I would reccomend always reviewing a hosts terms of service and privacy policies before even considering them. You don't want to sign up and find out that you have agreed to 5% uptime and agreed to let them sell every single bit of information you gave them to other companies. I've seen this happen many times, and the reason it usually happens is because they've seen so many recommendations so they decide it must be good, but come to find out the company is actually very bad, and everyone eventually ends up leaving them.
Another reason this happens is the so called Unlimited Bandwidth and Disk Space. There's no such thing, so stay away from hosts that offer it, especially if you plan on using it!
Review their website, do they have support pages? A faq page? Do they provide you with any documentation? Can you find what you're looking for? A contact page?
Try emailing them with any questions you may have and see if they answer all your questions and if you like their response.
Well that's just to help give you an idea, I know there's alot more things, but I think those are the basics.
And to be honest, I don't think you can ever really know how a host is going to work out for you until you try them. I have had very bad experiences with some very large hosts, and also some very good. So just like with everything, there's only one way to find out. :D
I would say take some things like that into consideration, but don't every buy hosting based on one thing alone, make sure you look at the all around big picture. cool:
Anyways good luck with your search for the right host.
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