Hi Michael!
How are you doing these days?
Thanks for asking about domain and hosting.
Question: what kind of a website does your friend want? Owning a simple brochure type website is completely different than running an ecommerce website.
For simple websites, I recommend Dreamhost.com just because of their low prices. And you can find coupons for them on google that will further reduce the prices. But I don't recommend them for ecommerce websites. Or websites that you expect will receive a lot of traffic (over 100 users per hour). Similar to dreamhost is hostgator.com. Good for simple websites. Not good for traffic heavy websites.
A better more expensive host is: Mediatemple.com. I host quite a few sites with them. Coupon:
http://mdtm.pl/VbMWCr (gives you $25 off as well as gives me $25 off from my monthly billing if you signup.) Mediatemple is good because your sites won't go down if you get mentioned in the New York Times or something and get a lot of people to visit you.