Well, dedicated website hosting is much more secure than Shared Web Hosting. If any site on shared sever is hacked then it can affect other web sites too.

Type host operating system: If your website is based on technologies such as JSP, ASP, etc, and require others, to complement or Microsoft MSACCESS MS SQL database that should go for windows hosting. On the other hand, if the user is using technologies like cold fusion, then you can run on Linux and Windows platform.
Just understand one thing; dedicated hard work over long hours generates a big money income. Now look again at what Affordable Web Hosting is in the context of real work.
It also comes with fantastico, cpanel. All this for about $109 annually which is pretty cheap. Please note this hosting plan is no longer available and is replaced with multisite dynamite plan. It is basically the same as my previous plan except for more diskspace and bandwidth. As I'm writing this, they have a promotion where you can get this hosting plan for 2 years at only $149 which I consider to be a good deal.
When you are looking for PHP Hosting, some basic features you need to remember. Like as cPanel this feature easily allows you to install shopping carts, blogs, forums, MySQL database. Ensure that you're hosting provider gives you 24/7 support. Disk space is another thing that you might to remember but it is mostly depending on how much data your Website will manage. Also take look at how much disk space may offer your PHP Shared Web Hosting UK hosting provider. You should make sure that you get sufficient space to suit the type of Website you are developing. But obliviously this kind of things is depends on your needs.
Where do I buy a domain name? Don't worry. Nowadays, many hosting providers will give you free domain name just to sign up with them. But if you like to build many websites, then you will need to register domain names. I would suggest Moniker, Godaddy etc...
This is why comparing different services provided by affordable web hosting providers is important. While other hosting companies lure potential customers with additional services, others simply make sure that your site is up and running and available to anyone who wants to visit them.