1: installing third-party packages in hosted spaces
You really can install third-party packages in your hosted space. If this is a pure python package, all you need to do is unzip it into a directory and then add this directory to the PYTHONPATH or sys.path environment variable.
This can be tedious for frequent use and will not work easily for compiled modules. If you have access to the shell of your python host, the excellent virtualenv package allows you to set up a private python environment with your own libraries.
To set up a virtual disk, you will do something like this in the shell:
$ virtualenv $HOME/my_python $ $HOME/my_python/bin/easy_install numpy
You can keep running easy_install for anything else you want to install in your personal python environment.
Now that you are writing python scripts, you will want to use your own python interpreter, if possible:
#!/home/myuser/my_python/bin/python import numpy # script here
If your python env cannot be specified (for example, if it is running mod_wsgi), you will need to add it to the import path:
import sys sys.path.insert(0, '/home/myuser/my_python/lib/python2.5/site-packages') import numpy
2: Website hosting with numpy
I can’t think of any hosting sites that offer numpy preinstalled. However, Dreamhost / Bluehost for sharedhosts does provide SSH access, and with shell access you can install numpy using the methods described above. Any virtual private server, such as Linode / Slicehost, will allow you to install anything you want.
3: AppEngine
As mentioned above, AppEngine will not let you install C extensions (but pure python functions work), so it is unlikely that numpy will work for you there, as I suspect that some of its functions use C accelerations.