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Web space or disk space is the total amount of megabytes or gigabytes a web hosting company gives you with your hosting plan. You probably already know that this space is used to hold the HTML and images that will be displayed on your website when your web pages are viewed, but…

What you may not know is that your web space also includes your website log files, FrontPage extensions, PHP files, CGI programs, externally linked CSS and Javascript files, and usually email accounts and emails as well as space for any databases.

Briefly, here’s how your web space is used up:

• Log files – a list of all requests made to your hosting company’s website server by your website. Your log files tell where visitors are coming from, how often they return, and how they navigate through your site.
• FrontPage extensions – FrontPage is website creation software from Microsoft that allows you to build and maintain web pages via a graphic interface. FrontPage extensions are script files that run on the web server to extend the functionality of FrontPage when your website is viewed. These extensions support features such as counters, data collection, e-mail processing, and database processing.
• PHP files – PHP is a scripting language that can create dynamic web pages. Useful for form processing, data base access or for generating customized website pages.
• CGI programs – stands for Common Gateway Interface and is a standard way for data to be passed between web applications e.g. passing data from an online form.
• Externally linked CSS files – CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, is an addition to HTML that gives website developers more control over how pages are displayed. With CSS, designers can create style sheets that define how different elements, such as headers and links, appear. If CSS definitions are shared among pages in a website, they are usually stored on the web hosting server as a file that is then “linked” by the web pages that require them.
• Javascript files – a type of computer code used to perform tasks on Web pages, such as incrementing a “number of visitors” counter or checking the input fields on a form for errors. If Javascripts are shared among pages in a website, they are usually stored on the web hosting server as a file that is then “linked” by the web pages that require them.
• Email accounts and emails – web hosting plans usually include one or even several email accounts so you can create email addresses such as: sales@yourwebsite.com or help@yourwebsite.com. In many cases the emails stored in these accounts are added to your web space quota. Check with your web hosting company for details.
• Database – a collection of data: part numbers, product codes, customer information, etc. Data is organized and stored on a web server that can be searched and retrieved by CGI or PHP programs.

Web space or disk space for your hosting plan is listed in megabytes or gigabytes. A megabyte (mb) is 1,000,000 bytes (1 million bytes) and a gigabyte (gb) is 1,000,000,000 bytes (1 trillion bytes). Even 1 megabyte might sound like a lot of space, but if you add up the size of each of your web pages and include all the files and data mentioned above, you will be surprised at how large the total can become.

And don’t forget, you may want to host more than one website on your hosting plan. If that’s your plan, you will need many megabytes or even gigabytes of web storage. Fortunately, disk space is cheap and most web hosting companies offer hosting plans that include hundreds of gigabytes of space.

Bottom line: If you are hosting one relatively simple website, you probably won’t need more than 50 mb of disk storage. However, if you’re planning on hosting a large website or multiple websites on a single hosting plan, then you should look for a plan with several hundred gigabytes of storage capacity.

You can estimate your web space needs by locating your website files on your hard drive and getting a total of the space used. This is easily done in Windows Explorer by selecting the folder or folders that contain your entire website and right-clicking. Select Properties and refer to the “Size:” display. You will get a total of the space used by all the files in the folder(s). Don’t forget to add estimated space for emails and databases.

Finally, total the space for all the websites you expect to host on a single hosting account, add at least half of that space back again for growth and you should have a fairly accurate estimate of the space you will need for your websites now and in the future.

Unlimited Hosting Is Limited Hosting

Imagine a web host has a server with 600 gigabytes of hard drive space and 3000 GBs of total bandwidth (3 terabytes) per month. They offer plans that are “Unlimited” and 250 customers are already on the server, so that a total of 550 GB of space and all 3TB bandwidth has already been used this month.

And the web host is still selling accounts on that server! How is this possible?

Overselling

The answer is that the actual amount of space and bandwidth used by a hosting account is often much lower than the resource cap. Most web masters use only a small fraction of their allowed limit (if there is one). If the drives are full, a new one can be added. Bandwidth can be purchased to cover a small overage. This is what is known as “Overselling.”

Most web hosts that oversell services do not take CPU resources into consideration. Processor resources are finite – you can’t just add in another on demand. And you, the hosted user, are stuck on a server that is constantly running all out just to keep up because of the sheer number of accounts hosted alongside you.

Overselling is why there are are so many web hosting companies out there and why so many seem to open up or shut down every day. Existing companies oversell to the point that the service tanks, the user gets fed up and finds an new host that is also overselling – a big plan at a crazy price is hard to pass up. As more and more clients jump ship, the old hosts pick up speed and the new ones get crushed under the load.

Overselling Sucks!

Now, overselling and unlimited hosting plans are not universally bad. For most users, this kind of shared hosting is perfectly fine. However, some sites are more CPU intensive, relying heavily on databases and PHP. WordPress sites are a common example – as sites become more popular, larger, or add more features and plugins, it’s not necessarily the disk space or bandwidth that becomes strained, it’s the server’s RAM and processors.

Many web hosts consider excessive use of these resources to be cause for canceling your hosting account. This is commonly called “TOS’ing” an account. Unlimited Hosting does not cover CPU resources. Having a popular site can actually be a violation of your Terms of Service!

How Do I Know How Overloaded My Server Is?

Log into your cpanel. Click on “Service Status.” You should now see a table of stats and a row of colored circles. Here are some signs your server might be overloaded:

1. Any of the status lights are NOT green
2. Any of the services are down
3. Server load is constantly over.90 (1 means NONE of the processors has cycles to spare)
4. Memory or Disk usage is consistently above 80%

These are not signs that your site is a resource hog, only indicators of how hard your server is working to serve all the hosting accounts. Just because your site is not a CPU hog doesn’t mean someone else’s site isn’t making yours slow and unstable.

What Can I Do To Limit My Resource Use?

Here are some ideas to keep your account from getting canceled:

1. Use a cache. There are several different cache plugins available for WordPress. Caches store data that can be reused for multiple users, instead of having the site reload data from the database every time a visitor makes a request.

2. Use a CDN. Content Delivery Networks store your site’s most commonly used files offsite and deliver them directly to your visitors.

3. Make fewer database calls. Using fewer WordPress plugins, or forum extensions will easy the load on your database server.

These tips will will also make your site faster.

Help! My Web Host TOS’d Me Off My Unlimited Hosting Plan!

If your site gets shut down for resource abuse, you have a few options:

1. You can rent a virtual private server or dedicated server. This can be expensive, especially if you are not an experienced server administrator and need a “managed” solution.

2. You can try signing up for another unlimited plan at another web host, but be sure to limit your resource use from now on, or you’ll probably get in trouble again.

3. Find a shared hosting provider that does not oversell. Web Hosts that do not oversell are rare and usually charge higher rates than more popular oversold web hosts, but are far cheaper and easier to use than dedicated or virtual servers.