You may have received a notice from YouCantStopIt.com about your server space exceeding your plan. If so read on.
Why is my space being taken up?
There are many reasons that your server space is filling up. Here are some of them and ways to reduce them:
Files on Website are too big!
Images:
Uploading a full size picture from your phone or digital camera to your website is easy, however it does come at a cost. If you are using wordpress it will make a smaller version of the file for you which is good for your visitors, but it doesn’t solve your problem of server space. Here’s how it works, a typical photo might be around 4,000 mb, but if you were to say export a photo from iPhoto or Picasa or your image editor of choice, it will add compression and take that file down to 1,000 mb. That is preferable not only for your server space constraints, but also for you! Try uploading a 4 mb and then upload a 1mb. You’ll notice the difference.
Movies:
You really shouldn’t host video on your site. Why? Well several reasons, a good quality video will eat through your bandwidth and your space. YouTube or Vimeo are both great options with plus and minus for both. But what they both do well is delivery quality video on a variety of devices. So no matter the operating system or device (iPhone, Droid, Kindle, iPad, PC, Mac) YouTube and Vimeo make sure that your video gets played.
Email:
If you are using IMAP and storing messages on the server, you would be surprised how much data can accumulate with attachments over time. How do you keep that clean? One of the methods we encourage people to do is to create a local folder within your email client (Outlook, Mac Mail, Thunderbird..) and copy the messages to that folder every quarter (3months). That way you can still access recent emails from your phone or other device on the server, but can get to your older messages if you need to. Alternatively you can set up your email as a POP account and set it to download and delete your messages from the server. YouCantStopIt.com is happy to provide assistance to you to help get your file sizes down. Contact Us for More Information.