’)
Determining how much storage space and bandwidth you may need for your sites is a question that most beginning site owners fret over. This is very natural, as most of us aren’t aware of how much space the various elements of your web page require. Let’s look into some of the factors that weigh into your decision on how much space and bandwidth to allot for your site.
The first thing you need to consider is what type of content you will be hosting on your site. Is it text, videos, audios, RSS feeds? Each has different demands on space and bandwidth, and you’ll need to account for it. Text takes the least amount, while videos and audios, especially if they are very long, have by far the most demand.
One of the ways people gauge their needs for this type of question is to remember that 2MB equals about 10 web pages, along with 4-5 images. This is usually fine for some minisites, but would not be enough for even a personal site that features a photo album or video library.
You can easily determine how much space you need at your sites present size by adding up the size of the folders and pages that reside on your hosting space. This will give you good idea where you are now. If you plan on significantly expanding and enlarging your site, then you will need to take that into account as you go forward.
If you are fortunate enough to have your site become popular, you may find your site’s bandwidth’s needs increasing. In general if you find yourself getting more than 500 visitors a day, or you offer a lot of downloadable products or files from your site, this too will demand more data transfer from your web hosting plan.
Another practical factor having an impact on these calculations is whether or not you intend to host other domains on your web hosting account. Many plans offer the ability to do so, whether as add-on domains, or as in a reseller account, completely separate domains sharing the same web hosting space. You simply need to make sure you are careful when allotting web hosting resources to make sure you have enough space for each site.
Once your needs outgrow a shared space, then it is a simple matter to upgrade to a VPS (virtual private server) or indeed your own dedicated server. That usually takes care of all your web space and bandwidth needs. These accounts are accordingly pricier, but not so much so that it is out of reach for most anyone.
Also, beware of the lure of web hosts offering “unlimited” bandwidth. There is always a limit, and you might find this out the hard way, when you start using more resources than they think you should, and are pressured into upgrading to a better plan, or find your site a victim of a nasty new wrinkle in web hosting, called “server throttling”, where you are scaled back whether you like it or not. It is infinitely better to sort these matters out as much as possible beforehand, and avoid any unpleasantness!
