How Much Hosting Space Do You Need?

Herman Drost

Many web hosts try to sell you a large amount of web hosting space that then costs you a lot each month. However, you may not need this much space. Have you ever calculated just how much disc space (MB) your web site uses? Do you really need an expensive hosting solution for your web site?

For my first web site, I purchased 20mb of disc space and wondered if this would be enough as I added pages to it. Well, recently I checked the size of this site which had grown to over 20 pages. To my surprise the size was only 3,269KB. This means it only uses a little over 3Mb of disk space.

Most of my friends sites also only use 2-3Mb for their sites. Therefore it is not necessary to purchase a large amount of space for a small site (if 20 pages = 3Mb, then 20Mb = 140 pages approx). Are you paying TOO much for the actual space you need?

How Do You Calculate The File Size Of Your Web Site? 1. First you need to understand how file size is measured. The smallest unit on a computer is a bit. One bit is one electronic on or off pulse. 8 bits strung together make one byte. One byte of information can put a letter, such as "B" on your screen.

If you put 1024 bytes together and then you have one unit of information called a kilobyte. Put 1024 kilobytes together and you have a megabyte. (Most floppy disks hold around 1.4 megabytes of information). Most of your graphics and web pages are measured in megabytes.

2. To determine your total site file size, right click on the root folder where your web site is housed – this will not only give you the total site size but also how many files and folders are contained in your site.

3. If you use an editor, such as FrontPage, go to the reports view, click on the site summary and you will get a reading of the total site file size. In Dreamweaver, just use the method in No 2.

Prepare To Expand Your Hosting Plan You may want to add pages, graphics, features eg scripts, databases etc, to your site in the future. Begin with a small hosting plan at first (even 5mb is enough to start out with), and then expand it as you add new features.

Check with your web host, if you can easily upgrade your hosting plan as you grow your site. You don't want to go through the hassle of changing hosts every few months.

Once you have determined your total site file size, check what hosting plan you have purchased and how much disc space has been allocated for your site. If you are only using 3mb of disc space but are paying for 100mb, then you may want to switch hosting plans and save yourself a ton of money each year.

Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster(CIW) owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Low Cost Hosting, Site Design and Promotion (http://www.isitebuild.com/sitehosting.htm)

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How to find good Web Hosting for your site! When building your first site the main things that you will probably think about is what types of content you will be adding to your site, how you are going to get visitors to your site and how you are going to generate good revenue from your site. Well, all of the things mentioned above are crucial things to consider, but then again, what's the point in thinking about them if you can't even get a good Web host to host your site with. If you choose a Web host that has a poor service then it can do more damage to your site than good. If your sites host goes down often then your site will also go down and your visitors will get annoyed and will go elsewhere. Your sites earnings will decline and many people online will ignore your site, as people will start to think that your site is down more than what it's up. So now you are probably thinking to yourself, "where and how can I find a good Web host to host my site with, which is also reasonably priced?" If you need a Web host that is reasonably priced so that you can make more profit from the turnover of your site, then a good place to start looking is by using a few Web hosting directories. You could start by using http://www.1hostseeking.com. More...