mack - 8:41 pm on Nov 7, 2006 (gmt 0)

To be honest virtual hosting is pretty much the norm when it comes to standard hosting plans today. There are only really 2 other alternatives one is to get a dedicated server and place all your sites on this server.

By doing this you can't be pulled down by other sites, that happen to share your IP address. The other is to pay your host for a unique ip for each of your sites. This way each site, even on your shared hosting server gets it's own IP address.

Another alternative if you are very keen to be safe is to have a dedicated server and seperate IP addresses for each of your domains.

The main problem with shared IP addresses is if one site gets banned. It is possible that a search engine such as Google may ban the entire ip, and in doign so all sites on that IP. Having an IP that only you host on is safer, although many sites run on shared IP's with no problems at all.

Mack.