• Howdy! Welcome to our community of more than 130.000 members devoted to web hosting. This is a great place to get special offers from web hosts and post your own requests or ads. To start posting sign up here. Cheers! /Peo, FreeWebSpace.net
managed wordpress hosting

newbie help. Does size really matter?

J

John Phoenix

New Member
I have seen a lot of offers that say 100 200 or 500 megabytes and some with 1000 5000 and up.

I plan to have a website with a few pages and a forum. No selling. Would a hosting service that only offers 250 MB of space be sufficient or should I go with the larger ones?
 
250MB would be fine for a few pages.... but probably not for a forum, at least not for an established one. 250MB might be okay to start with, but a forum will take up more than 250MB as it grows and more content is uploaded (ie/ avatars, photos, etc). I would say that you should find somebody offering about 500MB or more to be on the safe side.
 
I agree with deeplist. I would honestly go paid if your planning on having a forum as it requires more diskspace and often time can be database heavy.
 
if you wanted to save disk space, you can not allow upload avatars, and only allow the avatar to be links from external URL.
but still, for a forum, it is best to get yourself a decent paid hosting, coz the database will going to be huge in very short time.
 
250 mb as diskspace will be enough for you while starting, but you just need to judge bandwidth requirement on the basis of visitors and uploads and downloads from your website.
 
well, depends on the forum's popularity.
If it is popular, it will going to use up a lot of space for the database in very short time.
 
John Phoenix said:
I plan to have a website with a few pages and a forum. No selling. Would a hosting service that only offers 250 MB of space be sufficient or should I go with the larger ones?
Click to expand...

With above requirements, easily you can get hosting provider can offer you a free hosting but you must ensure your forum comply to their TOS.
 
I would say for a forum get 2gb to 3gb space & 30gb to 50gb bandwith should be enough is your forum if it is only for chatting and not for posting a lot of pics or videos
 
500MB space and 5GB bandwidth is more than enough for starting a forum- it will last some years at that rate unless you stumble into a popular subject area and get near-viral growth of the community.

Many hosts these days also offer 1GB space and 10GB bandwidth for free as well, these are also well suited to forum hosting and again will last a surprisingly long time.
 
Alot of these are way high.

A forum unless HUGELY popular will struggle to use 2mb in DB size. I'd say find the lowest values, around 100mb or so. You'll most likely get a genuine host.
 
JonnyH said:
Alot of these are way high.

A forum unless HUGELY popular will struggle to use 2mb in DB size. I'd say find the lowest values, around 100mb or so. You'll most likely get a genuine host.
Click to expand...

My forum has a 8.9 MB database. Do you consider 8,439 posts in 677 threads and 347 members registered hugely popular?
 
250mb is more than enough for the type of site you are talking about, that along with at least 2 gigs of bandwidth will last you for a long time.
 
For what it's worth, one of my forums with 20,000 posts and around 1300 members has a 34.07mb database. It is all the attachments (if you allow them) that can add up very quickly. That same forum is using around 600mb of disk space in attachments alone. Of course, attachments are not something you have to offer and store locally.
 
I may only add, you might better get the minimal amount of resources your site may require, and then upgrade, when needed. No point buying overdose of resources as it will come up with overpayment for your budget. But if it comes to the free hosting, the extra size will not harm, providing it's a real amopunt of received resources./
 
Just start out with the cheapest plan somewhere reliable and if you need more space, just upgrade.
 
Bigger is not always better....in hosting that is ;)

I was one person who thought I needed enormous webspace and transfer when I first started out (todays standard packages were huge offers back in 2001), and as a result bounced from host to host. I then took my time, saw what my site used and went a little higher to allow for expansion.

ALWAYS do research into a host. For those offering the 20GB space and 200GB transfer, check their inception date. Most will saw 2011, meaning they just started up. Now figure how will they pay to allocate all their users that amount. Either they are massively overselling, which will catch up to them and force them to shut down, or they are paying ridiculous amounts for their server and will shut down since they do not want to pump that kind of cash in for nothing.

A few pages wont use too much space/transfer unless they are laden with images/other large files. Forums starting up wont use much, unless they are unique and a popular category (or the first of its kind, like a vid game). If you had the site before, look at the usage stats. Allow for initial expansion and always ask the host about upgrade packages.

Personally I would not accept any offer that allows huge space/transfer unless I knew about them first. For me, thats anywhere over 1GB space and 15GB transfer, give or take a little.

Remember though, and something that I cannot express enough, ALWAYS do research on a prospective host. You may take some time doing that, but is far better then bouncing from host to host and taking the time to post here, upload, find the host gone and rinse/repeat.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top