What should I look for in a LSL-to-HTTP web host?

I have some plans that require developing an HTTP back-end for some in-world objects. I have a web host that's cheap and reliable for what I've needed up til now (FrontPage publishing), but I have a feeling they don't have what I will need in order to develop/test anything for Second Life.

For example, it sounds like I need cURL, and their knowledge base says nothing about that. I also think I need to be able to telnet into them or something in order to do live testing of scripts, but they clearly don't have any sort of terminal support. It's just FTP and HTTP uploading (and their FTP service SUCKS).

To those of you who have done back-end work for Second Life, or have done PHP scripting in general- what should I look for in a web host, and can you recommend any hosts who have all the services I'd need?

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Try two...

Been eying http://code.google.com/appengine/

I have yet to look into it seriously though.

Hrm, that actually looks pretty interesting (and affordable!). I think I might spend a couple days learning that to see whether it fits the bill. Thanks.

Or take a look at the Google App Engine
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/
500 megs transactional object store (rather than a relational database) and a ridiculous amounts of hits per month for the free version, and then you can buy upgrades.
It is Python, however, not PHP. I'd count that a plus, but if you're used to PHP a switch may not be what you're looking for.

Google is the new evil empire, but it's damn hard to hate them when they keep providing amazing products

Edited: Ah, I see I was a little late at mentioning that.

Wilde,

You might want to look at Sloppy if you're just going to be worried about using the host for a data store. It's ready to go for google app engine that everyone else has already mentioned.

/54/76/279642/1.html

AppEngine+httprequest seems to be a match made in heaven.

Thanks,
K.