Hosting TutorialPlease use this tutorial to resolve any myths you've heard or questions you may have regarding hosting before continuing your search for a hosting provider.Chapter One - Overview Chapter Two - Relative Pricing Chapter Three - Space Requirements Chapter Four - Bandwidth Requirements Chapter Five - Email Information Chapter Six - Counters and Statistics Chapter Seven - Real CGI-Bin Chapter Eight -Control Panel Chapter Nine - Mailing Lists/News Letter Chapter Ten - E-Commerce Chapter Eleven - FTP Chapter Twelve - Connection and Reliability Chapter Thirteen - Support Bandwidth RequirementsOverviewCalculating How Much is Enough? Economizing Overview Bandwidth is a term used to describe the measurement of the amount of data transferred to and from your website. Bandwidth is perhaps the most expensive element of hosting a busy website. Space is used to store the site and then that's it. Bandwidth is that same space over and over again as visitors download your pages. Many ISP's advertise unlimited hits and unlimited bandwidth, some refer to it as unmetered transfers. Some even advertise it in conjunction with inexpensive hosting packages. The truth be told 99% of web sites never do 300 mb in a month, and most of what they do is from the owner of the site. Don't buy a hosting package just because it advertises large values for bandwidth, this is just another way dishonest operators roundup business. If you were to actually use more than a couple of gigs you would find the terms changing on your account. I have even heard of hosting firms saying, "yea it's unlimited, unlimited up to 3 gigs." While that is silly, their goal in setting high limits is to get the comparison shopper to buy, knowing full well that most will never use enough to matter. Unfortunately, webmasters are an optimistic breed, and all assume their sites "will take off and need 10 gigs in no time." Buy quality of service and connection first, calculate the bandwidth you will need based on realistic estimates. It's easy to expand later if things work out and all that money starts rolling in. :o) Back to the top Calculating Calculating bandwidth is much more difficult that calculating storage space. While file size times number of downloads is the basic function it never works out that way. Very few visitors will ever see every page in your site (unless it's a one page site) Lots of visitors won't even wait for the first page to load all the way, and they're gone. Most repeat visitors will have your site in cache memory and won't need to download it again. So, as you can see, a 10 meg website times 1000 visitors will not require 10 gigs of transfer -- it's more like 400 mb, in my experience. While advertisements typically say, "unlimited FTP" this, of course, refers to the way some ISP's limit the time of day you can FTP and some even make you email the changes and wait for them to put them up, limiting you to 1 or 2 emails a month. your FTP, mail and even the visitors requests for pages all count toward your total bandwidth. So get out there and help to oppose spam. Back to the top How Much is Enough? Be very careful, all hosting in NOT equal. Many ISP's charge fines, similar to late fee's on video rental, many times the normal rate. Find the Reputable Host that will charge you only for what you need and if you go over charge reasonable rates for overages. I have found that for: Personal web pages (bus. cards and Resume') 100 mb. Informational and affiliate programs w/banner exchange 300 mb Free stuff (links only) 500 mb Free stuff fonts, midi's, screen savers 1 to 3 gig Be warned, sites that take off, may use more every month. Processor and network usage may require you to get your own machine, even 2 or more! Back to the top Economizing As the connection speeds increase users are capable of enjoying much higher bandwidth sites, but all the networks slow down occasionally, and a high bandwidth site suffers the most from these occurences. As you do expand, and advertise you will use more bandwidth. You will eventually be charged for it -- regardless of what they advertize! You can take steps to minimize your usage, learn how to now and practice for when you really need it. A banner exchange that requires you to server your own banners can cost a lot. Downloads should be protected by a script that assures others haven't linked to you to save themselves from the excessive load. Compress all graphics, and streamline all code. Back to the top
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