Hosting Company (from Shared To Dedicated)

I’m not sure this I the right place to post this, but since I’ll need also a dedicated server I guess it is (I’m sorry if it’s not).

Hi to you all.

I’m developing my own site. This will be my very first time building and managing a site, so I’m for sure a noob on this type of stuff (but I have a good general knowledge on computers (I build my own computers and solve every problem I encounter)).
The site will be managed by joomla 1.5 plus a phpbb3 forum (maybe vbulleting in the future). Obviously when my site is completed and published on the net I’ll have zero members, but I hope to see this number increase (lol…from 0 members it isn’t a hard thing to accomplish…I guess ).

Having a really low number of members and visitors I think that I’ll start from a shared hosting plan (or VPS) and then go up to a dedicated server (when I’ll need it…I hope soon )….probably a managed dedicated server since I don’t know much of the technicalities needed to manage a dedicated server.

This being said, I would prefer to go for a good hosting company (cheap…but reliable) that has both shared and dedicated hosting plans so when I’ll have to upgrade (from shared/VPS to dedicated) everything will be smoothly managed by them.

The site/forum aims to have a large community, a good n° of hosted files (images and mp3’s (recorded voice) ---> everything legal!)

What hosting company would you suggest?

Is it possible to have the site on one server and the forum on another? (considering that the forum will be integrated in the joomls CMS with a bridge).