How Much Hosting Space Do You Need?

Ross Dalangin

Many web hosts try to sell you large amount of space but do you actually need them? How many pages do you want your website be created? Do you need a guest book, chat, messageboard or search engine in your website? Do you really need an expensive hosting solution for your website? Do you have future plan on getting more pages?

If you want to know how much space you would need you must know what are the sizes of a file is. 1. The smallest unit on a computer is a bit. The bit is on or off; 1 or 0; true or false.

on = 1 = true

and

off = 0 = false

Byte are compose of 8 bits and it is equal to a character or letter. So, a letter "A" is equal to one byte and letters "AB" is equal to two bytes.

Kilobytes (KB) are composed of 1024 bytes because it uses the binary system which uses 0's and 1's. Two to the tenth power is equal to 1024.

2*2=4
4*2=8
8*2=16
16*2=32
32*2=64
64*2=128
128*2=256
256*2=512
512*2=1024


Megabytes are composed of 1024 kilobytes. (MB)

Gigabytes are composed of 1024 megabytes. (GB)

Did you know that my site's total size is only 40 megabytes. I have a search engine of more than 5,000 sites (their description, url, keywords, contact info, email), I have a chat room, message boards, 108 directories and more than 2,000 pages. What's more if you only have 5 pages website.

I check one of my client's 5 pages static website and the size is only 602.03 KB . This means it only uses less than 1 MB of disk space.

The site will need more space if you want to have an active community with message board, chat and search engines.

To check the size of your website, go to your "Explorer" and right click on the folder were your files located then select "Properties" and you will see the file size.

Another is copy all your files into your floppy disk on your drive A. Most of the disk and disk drives available are 1.38 MB capacity so if all your files are copied into your floppy disk then it is lower than 1.38 MB.

Ask the Web Host if you can upgrade your 5MB web space into 10MB or 100MB space in your future needs. A good host can provide you your desired plan.

Less headache if you know how much space you would need. Upgrade your plan later if you need more pages.



About the Author

Ross Dalangin
Software Developer Since 1991
Computer Instructor Since 1994
Web Developer and Consultant Since 1995
Database and Network Administrator Since 1996
Search Engine Optimizer Since 2000
Web Publisher Since 2001
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