TriPHP Blog

How Much Web Space Do You Need?

Web space or Disc space is the amount of data that can be stored in the
hard disc of the web server. All web hosting accounts generally provide a certain amount of
web space. Usually this space is between 50 and 500 MB.

How much space one needs depends on the nature and size of the website.
Most websites are mainly composed of text. There may be a few images. Sometimes there may be
Flash animation involved. Text is simple and economical and it occupies very little space.
However,images and flash require much more space.

Some people may want their webpages to be filled with colorful images.But
this is a great mistake - it makes the pages too heavy and it will require much more time
to load.The maximum size of a page (including images) should be
within 50-60 KB. A good page size should be under 30 KB. If the average page size is 30 KB,then even 10 MB webspace will be sufficient ( unless the site is a forum or something like that).

Next comes bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data which one is allowed
to transfer  per month. Bandwidth includes all uploads and downloads irrespective of
the protocol used.
Bandwidth depends on various factors like — the average page size, the
total number of visitors the website will have and the average number of pages the
visitors will visit.
If the average page size is 30 KB,the average number of visitors is 5000
per month and if  each visitor will visit 3 pages on an average,then the bandwidth
requirement will be less than 1 GB per month,which is provided by most of the low cost hosting packages.

So when somebody is launching his/her website for the first time,he/she
need not worry about disc space or bandwidth.A disc space of 10 MB and bandwidth of 1 GB will be sufficient.
But when choosing a web host, one should choose a host which provides
account upgrades.
If the requirement of space or bandwidth increases in future then one can
go for the upgrades instead of changing the host.