Well, I talked about how to find out how much bandwidth your site could possibly need and how to find it out. Now I want to tell you the “great” secret of finding out how much server space your web site will need. Web hosting companies many times offer you unlimited and as I mentioned before and I would like to mention it again – Unlimited does not exist. Although “Unmetered” might exist. Nothing in the world what has been done by human is unlimited, because every data-center has limits.
But a company can tell you they offer unmetered and this simply means you are free to use the resources and they do not count how much you are using, but be prepared that even these unmetered offers are limited by TERMS OF USE, FAIR USAGE POLICY or Acceptable use policy. Always read them before ding anything ridiculous!
How to find out the space needed?
The space your web site needs on the server is determined by the amount of data you will store there. It’s the amount of your databases, pictures, text and other data you will try and upload/hold on your server in your space. I would say it’s easier to find out how much disk space you really need, than to figure out how much bandwidth your site might need. Bandwidth relates to visitors and you might get thousands of them or none at all, but your files will be on the server regardless of the number of visitors your site gets and you can manage the data and the number of the data 
The formula?
- all images = x
- all text data = y
- all audio/video data = z
- all html/css/php/etc. files = c
- other possible files = b
DISK SPACE NEEDED = X + Y + Z + C + B = measured in GB [gigabytes]
Examples
How to find out the disk space a WordPress installation needs?
Let’s assume your basic WP installation with your own added images and themes would be 10MB [an empty WP would be much less]. You need to know, that this is just the base WP with a few themes in it. You need to figure out how much data will be stored there. If you will use high resolution images or not. What files will be stored on your WP etc.
I would suggest you could need around 500 – 1 GB of disk space for a really decent web blog with tons of images and articles.
How to find out ow much a Joomla needs?
Well, once again, download a default Joomla package and unzip it. Right click on the unzipped file and select properties and than look at what the SIZE number tells you. This is the minimum your site will need! You need to add the space for your own files and thus you might get from the default e.g. 20MB to 2GB… It all depends on how much data you will store on your disk space and what size it will be
Basic rules
The amount of disk space your web site will need is determined by the kind of data you will store on your server and how much data will be stored. Plus you should always remember this:
- You are given a set number of disk space? Well, than be sure you know how much space you will need.
- Your needs may change. One thing is the initial need and other is the need after you upload a 500MB video file from a e.g. conference
- Always figure out how much space your default site will need and add more to the figure to cover the expansion of your web site over the course of the time
Hopefully this article helped some of you. Have a nice day and see you next time!
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