Hi Guys
I need to know if I really need virtual hosting for just hosting one site? if I do what would be the best away setting it up? if I don't what do I need to do to set it up?

Assuming you mean an Apache instance then no, there's no need, just stick with the defaults. It'd make things more scalable in the long run if you did want to add more, but even if you didn't you could add more later without any real hassle.

Hard to say, since you don't say what environment you're using. Is this a single machine at your home? On a hosted environment from a provider? At your office on the intranet?

If you're going to be getting alot of traffic, and your site is tied to the web page (i.e. www.widgets.com, if you're selling widgets), then I'd go with virtual hosting. Easy to set up, and makes your web pages easier to remember.

If it's a small site, and your target audience is small, having them key in a path (i.e. your.server.com/webpages/), won't be a big hassle. Virtual hosting isn't hard to set up, so it's up to you.

I am planning to use Ubuntu Server 8.04 and this on a extra machine at home and yes I will be selling products online for my small business and I do plan to have a forum on the same computer but using the same domain address. and I had problems setting up Virtual Hosting all the time so.

I don't really understand what's difficult about virtual hosts in the first place. it's just the normal config with <VirtualHost> tags around it and a defining attribute inside with e.g. ServerName. There's nothing particularly interesting about them in the first place. This can get more difficult when you've SSL involved, but hopefully you don't and you're pushing and sales off to a third party.

well I have to have SSL because I will be dealing with credit card and personal information and show me a guide exactly shows me how to setup virtual host on my server because I always mess it up.

if you're this unsure, then directly handling credit cards is a very bad idea...

I couldn't agree more. If you're handling credit card data, you'd be better served, by going with a managed host type environment, that's already set up.

guys I am using PayPal and 2checkout all that does from my site transfers over to there site I do believe but it wont matter I still would have to have SSL on my server and website.