 |
Web Hosting Advice
Shared hosting may mean being associated with other businesses whose work is the search engines that serve them. If you wind up sharing an IP address (unique web server address) with an for example, a spam website, this can cause you problems if the search engines associate your site as an highly spammed site. This can be avoided by asking for your own unique IP address.
See our list of good hosting providers that will provide you a unique IP address for only a small additional monthly charge.
|
|
 |
Website Sections
Click one of the main web site section links below for a stockpile of information.
|
|
|
|
|
|
You are here: Web Publishing > Internet Marketing > Bandwidth Meter and Management
|
|
|
So what is transfer rate and bandwidth? How much does your website need?
Transfer rate (or “bandwidth”) is a little trickier, because it has to do with your site’s popularity. I have a website called horses-and-horse-information.com, and it’s a pretty popular website. It’s been averaging around 14,000 unique page views per day. The average page size on that site is 30K, but that means that that 30K is being downloaded around 14,000 times a day, making the transfer requirement 42,000K (42MB) a day, or 1,260,000K (12.6GB) in a month. So for that site, I need a monthly transfer rate of around 13GB. And if I expect my site popularity to grow, which I do, I’d better be ready for more than that!
|
|
|
So after looking at my hosting needs for this website, I had probably have a hosting plan that covers 20GB rate of monthly transfer. Since my site has around 100 pages at an average of 30K per page, I need 3,000K or 3MB of web or disk storage space from my host for the web pages. And here is where the silent enemy comes in. Since I have about 3,000 unique visitors a day all causing 500 bytes a piece of log files to be created, I will need another 1.5MB per day for every day of log history that I want to keep. If I want to be able to see a 3 month history for my website I will need at least another 45MB of space for log files. If I want a complete years history I will need 180MB of web space just for the log files. Do you see how the log files can be the silent killer when it comes to web space?
When it comes to transfer rates for an up-and-coming site, bigger is often better, but I wouldn’t be able to say the same thing about web space. The main reason is that, while you certainly could build some fabulous pages all tricked out with animation and tons of graphics, if your site visitors are working on low-tech dial-ups, it’s going to take an enormous amount of time to load your pages. During that time, people grow bored. Their clicking fingers start to itch, and before you know it, they’re off perusing someone else’s site. If you try to keep your pages somewhere between 30-50 KB, they’ll load relatively fast for everyone, adding stickiness to your site and increasing your conversion potential and average page views per visitor. If your pages run between 30-50 KB, you’ll be able to get somewhere between 20 and 33 pages in 1 MB of Web space. If you’re planning a hundred-pager, you’ll need 3 - 5 MB for the disk space. You should also plan to double that so you can keep a mirror image of your website in a protected area along with another mirror image on your own local PC’s hard disk.
Most websites are small when they start, and with most hosts offering 10MB of space and 1 GB of bandwidth, a starting website will probably be just fine with those specs. If you are running video or audio for people to download, you’ll need to do some more calculating, because both those things take up more space and increase your bandwidth needs drastically and dramatically.
If you’re not sure but are thinking your site will grow and grow, make sure to go with a web host who will allow you to upgrade your account without socking it to you with extra fees.
Never Get Stuck with a Troublesome Hosting Account Again
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can read all the hosting articles listed below by purchasing our web hosting guide, "Web Hosting - The truth and nothing but the truth as I know it," in its entirety for $9.95. This all-inclusive 31 page quide on hosting was written by Internet Marketing experts and educators, Meg Awtrey and Ken Giddens. Simply click the link below to instantly download this informative web hosting guide.
Buy Our Web Hosting Guide for $9.95
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Web Hosting Topics
|
|
- Why Bandwidth Can't Be Unlimited
- Operating System and Script Issues
- The Overselling of Web Space
- Hosting Hidden "Extra" Fees
- Other Hosting Plan Limits
- Building a New Website
- "Extras" that Help Increase Your Business
- Other Nice-to-Have Functionality
- Website Uptime Guarantee
- Website Uptime Monitoring
- Other Ways to Determine Downtime
- Consumer Protection Policies
- My SQL Database
- Understanding Server Loads
- Backing Up Your Website
- Control Panel & Server Side Includes (SSI)
- Windows or Linux Hosting?
- Raw Logs to Increase your Traffic
- Traffic vs. Conversions
- E-mail Accounts
- Gettting Email From Your Hosting Account
- Switching Hosting Providers and Services
- Overlap Between Hosting Providers
- Keeping E-mail Under Control
- Changing Your Name Servers
- Checking the Hosting Changeover
- Testing Hosting Server Speed
|
 |
 |
 |
|
Did you find the information you were looking for?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
