Tag: web hosting | Quanta Web Studio

12 tips to reduce your site’s disk space usage.

So…you started out with a new hosting account, and had plenty of disk space. But now you’ve had your website for a while, and you’re running out of space. How did that happen?

It is perfectly natural for the amount of space your website needs to grow over time. After all, you add webpages, blog posts, images, and maybe music or video files, all of which add to your disk space usage.

As your site grows older, the log files associated with it grow incrementally as well. These files include statistics about your website visitors and various processes, and any errors which have occurred.

Unused plugins and themes chew up space, as do forgotten or unnecessary backups and databases.

Let’s go through all of these things one-by-one to see how you can reduce the amount of disk space you’re using.

1. Backups

CPanel makes it easy to make backups of your site. But it’s possible to forget to delete backups after they are no longer needed. Usually they are saved to the root folder of your account. By clicking “Backup Wizard” in CPanel you can see if there are any existing backups stored on the server. You can also click the Disk Usage icon in CPanel, or explore via FTP.

If you do wish to keep a backup which is currently stored on your website, it’s a good idea to download it to your own computer or to an offsite location such as Dropbox.

If your site is built on WordPress, there are various WordPress backup plugins which can automatically backup your website on a schedule, and store the backup on a third-party site such as Amazon AWS or Dropbox, so your own disk space isn’t used for permanent storage. My favorite such plugin is UpdraftPlus but there are other good ones, too.)

2. Email

Forwarding saves space.

Do you access your mail on the server, or is it merely forwarded to another address? Forwarding your email to another address (e.g., Gmail) rather than storing it on the server will save some disk space. Check with your web host if you’re not sure how to set up forwarding.

Do you use an email app?

If you use an app such as Outlook, Windows Live Mail, or Thunderbird to download your email from the server, go into that app’s settings and make sure “leave a copy on the server” is un-checked. Otherwise, in addition to downloading each mail, it will also leave it on the server, which can quickly add up to use a lot of space.

Check your Spam Assassin settings.

If you have Spam Assassin enabled via your CPanel account, be sure to either select “Enable Auto-Delete of Spam”. If you choose to have suspected spam sent to a folder where it is not automatically deleted, you’ll need to check that folder often to prevent saved spam mail from chewing up your disk space.

Have you forgotten an email account?

If you have an email account you no longer use, check to see if old mail is still being stored on the server.

3. WordPress themes

If you’ve installed WordPress themes that you’re not using, go ahead and delete them. Unused themes serve no purpose, taking up disk space and even potentially introduce security risks.

4. WordPress plugins

WordPress plugins can add important functionality to your website. But if you don’t really need a particular plugin, it should be deleted. Not only do unnecessary plugins use up disk space, but they can also slow down your site, and even introduce security risks.

There are two steps to getting rid of an extra plugin. First, click to deactivate it; once deactivated, you can click to delete it.

Some plugins will ask, upon deletion, if you would also like to delete all information associated with it. This is your call — but if you don’t plan on using that plugin again, there is no point in saving all its settings and stored information in your database. That just bloats your database and takes up unnecessary disk space.

Some active plugins may be poorly written, causing them to take more space than necessary, or to generate files which eat up space; incorrect settings may also cause problems. If you’ve deleted unnecessary plugins and still have issues, you might take a deeper look to see if any of your active plugins are causing issues. (This can be hard to diagnose; get help from your host or web developer if necessary.)

Please note that some plugins log information, and these logs can increase in size over time. For instance, a security plugin may keep a log of banned IPs. To reduce space used, you can purge these logs, but if you do so, the security of your site may be somewhat compromised.

5. Your database(s)

The WordPress database contains all of your website’s posts and pages, as well as settings for your site, theme, and many of your plugins. Its health is critical to your site.

But, the database is susceptible to bloat. An over-sized database not only takes a lot of room, but it can slow down your site. Here are some ways you might wish to clean it out:

Delete page revisions.

This is, potentially, a big cause of wasted disk space. Each revision is stored as a separate page in the database.

So, every time you save a changed post or page, a new revision is created and stored in the database. It is best to flush out the revisions from time to time. You would be amazed at how bloated your database can become due to revisions!

Delete trashed pages.

Did you toss a page or post in the trash? Go ahead and delete it permanently. It still takes up space in the trash.

Delete spammed comments.

These can pile up fast and can really eat up disk space.

Don’t want to do it manually? Me neither!

Fortunately, there is a plugin which will clean up the items above — and more — in less than a minute. It’s the RVG Optimize Database Plugin.

I use it on most of the sites I build. (On one of my larger sites which is often updated, it cleans out up to 5MB every time I use it. Over the past couple years it’s saved me over 600MB of disk space!)

This is a very fast and easy way to potentially reduce your disk space.

Abandoned database tables

Another thing to do is to check to see if your database is bloated with tables left behind by plugins no longer in use. Most deleted plugins will completely uninstall themselves. But some don’t, leaving tables full of old data behind in your database. Cleaning these up can not only reduce the amount of disk space used, but can also speed up your website.

I would not recommend doing this if you don’t know your way around the database, however. In that case it would be better to hire someone experienced to do it for you, as any errors made can result in your website going down — or in the worst-case scenario, being deleted altogether. (If you do work on your database, always make a backup first!)

Abandoned databases

Its possible your site may actually have some entire databases which are unused. For instance, these can be left behind by plugins, or previous installations of WordPress. Be careful before deleting anything (make a backup first!) — but if you do find an extra database, deleting it can save a whole lot of room.

6. Optimize your images!

Lossy compression

Your images should be compressed as small as you can get them without greatly compromising image quality, before you ever upload them to your site. Most image editing software will do this as you save your file; you can choose the level of compression you wish to have. For web use, I most often compress my images to about 30% of the original. This is called lossy compression — because you do lose some image quality (although you can do it so that the loss is minimally noticeable). This type of optimization can save you huge amounts of disk space.

Lossless optimization

However, you can take this a step farther. Plugins such as EWWW Image Optimizer will knock down the file size of your images even more. This type of optimization is lossless, meaning that it doesn’t affect the quality of the image at all.

(Bonus tip: Image dimensions are important, too. Don’t upload an image which is larger in dimensions than will be displayed on the page. For example, if you’ll only ever display the image at 500 pixels in height, uploading one that is greater in height than 500 pixels is a waste of disk space.)

If you only need a For more on this topic, check out my article that explains image optimization in depth.

7. Large media files

Large images aren’t the only space eaters. Music and video files are huge and a single file can chew up a whole lot of precious disk space.

Many web hosts restrict the amount of space you can use for large media files, as they can slow down the server. You might consider hosting them elsewhere — such as YouTube or Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has a very low cost. (Yep! Amazon offers more than a shopping site — many companies, large and small, use their servers for storage and more.) AWS S3 hosting services has a very low cost based upon space used. Here’s how to host files at AWS S3.

8. Malware

It’s a good idea to scan your site for malware. Try Sucuri.net for a free scan, or use their WordPress plugin.

9. Caching plugins

A caching plugin can speed up your site. But it will need extra space to store the cached files. A misconfigured plugin can also cause issues; check your settings.

10. Various logs

Error logs

When errors occur on your site, they are usually logged. If some aspect of your site is generating errors regularly (perhaps a script, plugin, or database error), some very large error logs can be produced!

FTP into your site or use CPanel’s File Manager to look for error logs; these are text files and often named “error_log”.

If you find an error log, open it up and see what is generating the error. The error should be fixed, or it will continue to generate error logs. Then, delete the error log.

Other logs

Depending upon the specifics of your particular site, there may be other logs which will grow over time. Check carefully to see if this is the case.

Statistics logs are what are used to produce the AWStats Webalizer, Analog, and other reports on your CPanel account. But as your site ages, these logs grow. If you don’t use the stats (perhaps, as most webmasters do, you prefer to use Google Analytics), you can delete these logs periodically. They are found in your account’s root in the /tmp/ folder. They can be deleted via FTP or CPanel’s File Manager.

11. CPmove files

Files named “cpmove.xxxx” are automatically created when a site is restored, or moved to a new server. They should be automatically deleted after that process, but occasionally that doesn’t happen. Check for these as you would for error logs as described above. You can safely delete these files to save a little room.

12. Core dumps

A core dump is caused by a process which is not working correctly. When this happens, the program terminates abnormally and then dumps its memory into a file. These files can get very big!

You can FTP into your website or use the CPanel File Manager to find any core dumps. (The file name of a core dump will begin with “core.xxxx”) You can delete the dump, but if the root cause isn’t corrected, these files will continue to be generated. Before deleting the file, open it up to see what the faulty program may be, so it can be disabled or corrected.

A bonus tip…

Some processes need extra space to operate. For example, even if you backup your site to an offsite server such as S3, the backup still needs to be created and temporarily saved, on your own server. Other processes require disk space during their normal operation, too. It is wise to keep a certain amount of disk space available; headroom equal or greater than 30% of your allotted space is a pretty good rule of thumb. If you do backups, be sure to allow for that. (More is always better.) By keeping disk space usage to the least amount possible, you’ll avoid running into future problems.

A note on web hosting

If you’ve done everything you can to get your disk usage down — or just don’t want to bother with it — you can always ask your web host to upgrade your hosting package to one that has a greater disk space allowance.

Have you had issues with disk space?

There are quite a few things which can eat up your disk space. Finding the cause can be tricky — but it is worthwhile because cleaning up your disk space can make your site faster, more efficient, and can save you money.

Have you ever had a disk space problem? Please share your experience by leaving a comment below!

And, if you need assistance with your disk space issues, do get in touch. I’d be happy to help.

On CPanel web stats, why they differ – and how to interpret them

Most web hosting accounts come with one or more free statistics programs to show you how many visitors you’ve had, where they came from, and how many pages they viewed. CPanel, a control panel which can help you manage your website, usually includes several stats packages. Here’s an explanation of what each does.

AWStats is great in that it’s well-organized, easy to read, and contains quite a lot of information. These features usually make it a favorite among the CPanel stats programs. Information is presented by month, and day, but you can also get rough yearly numbers.

Webalizer has a more basic interface, showing visits, page views, and more on a daily and monthly basis. It also shows the average number of visitors per day. Webalizer tends to show higher totals than AWStats.

Analog Stats shows overall numbers for the life of your account, as well as monthly reports. Information is compiled monthly, not daily. It shows the number of pages viewed, but not visitor numbers.

This next one is not really a stats report but may come in handy. Latest Visitors shows approximately the 300 latest visitors to your website, and what they viewed (it shows web pages – but also images, etc.). This report is updated in real time and no stats are generated. Many find the “legacy” version of Latest Visitors easier to read – to get to it, click the link at the bottom of the page.

There is one more stats report I should point out – Google Analytics. This report isn’t available in CPanel; it’s provided by Google, and is the industry standard for website reporting.

To enable it, sign up for a free account. Then, place the Analytics tracking code on your website. (After that, go back to the GA website and read up on how to interpet reports — and, possibly to enable more granular reporting to more closely track things that are important to you.)

Because of the way the stats are generated, GA totals are significantly lower than those produced by the programs which come with CPanel. Some of this is due to the way it collects data — it only counts visitors who have javascript enabled in their browsers — and partially due to the way it interprets the data gathered.

I also recommend signing up for Google Search Console, which will give you more information about your site with regard to internet searches.

Why bother?

What matters most is not actual numbers but overall trends, usually on a monthly or quarterly basis.

By looking at the stats reports, you can gain an understanding of who your visitors are, what they’re looking for, and what’s bringing them to your website. You can learn what subjects interest them most – and the provide more of it.

Once you have this information you can use it to help reach your business goals – and measure your progress against those goals.

Interpreting the CPanel reports

You might be surprised that each stats program counts visitors differently, so there’s actually no “right” answer to how many people have visited your site on a daily (or monthly) basis. There are only interpretations. Let’s see why.

This is the process:

1. Every time an event happens on the server it’s logged. When a visit is made to a page, or an image, web page, or another type of file is served, an entry is made in the access logs. The logs for each day are usually thousands of lines long. These access logs are accrued monthly and reach a huge size.

2. Once a day, the server runs several stats programs (AWStats, Webalizer, AnalogStats…) which analyze the access logs. (This usually happens during the wee hours of the morning, when fewer visitors are on the sites because it can be quite resource-intensive.)

3. Each stats program has its own algorithm for interpreting the logs. For example, one program might interpret a visit to a “404 not found page” as a viewed page; another may not.

Similarly, one program might not count a visitor’s second visit to the site as a separate visit, if it occurs within a few hours of the first visit. However, another program would count them as two separate visits.

Some stats programs filter out many visitors that they consider to be automated (bots or spiders); others filter out fewer of these visits. Some may filter out some legitimate visitors.

So, there are many ways to interpret what represents a single page view, or one visit to the site, a repeat visit, etc., and each stats program does it differently. This accounts for variation between the numbers in the various stats reports.

Therefore, whichever stats program you consult, what you’re seeing is always a ballpark estimate. There is no one “right” answer – just different methods of estimating the same thing using different criteria. But that’s okay. The point is not to get bogged down in exactly how many visitors your site has had, but to look at trends and opportunities. What are the trends over time?

One more thing — remember never to compare the totals from one report to those on another as they are measuring different things.

Here’s a bricks-and-mortar analogy

Some stores measure foot traffic vs sales – with a device which counts each time a body goes in and out of the store. Then, they divide by two to get a number of people (each person goes both in and out). Then the number of sales transactions they had that day are divided into the number of people who entered the store, to learn which percentage of shoppers who came in actually bought something. Sounds pretty easy, right?

But how accurate that percentage depends on what’s counted. Do they factor out deliveries, employees coming and going, friends or family coming in for non-business reasons, solicitors and others who aren’t customers? What if someone enters twice and only buys something once? What if an employee or family member buys something? What if someone enters just beyond the door and leaves without shopping? Are these things factored in, or out? It’s an inexact science and results depend on methodology. The same thing happens with web stats.

Visits vs. engagement

It always feels great to see large numbers of visitors! But, what’s important is not always how many visitors you’re getting, but what they’re actually doing on your site. Visitor numbers can be seductive, but it’s wise to look a little deeper.

– Do your visitors tend to look at one page and leave (and sometimes that’s okay!), or do they explore the site further? How many pages do they look at?

– Do they visit once, or return to see more? (Compare unique visitors to the number of visits to find out.)

– Are sales increasing? Getting more visitors doesn’t always make a difference to your bottom line. But getting the right visitors – the ones who actually buy your product – does.

– Are your pages represented on social media?

It’s not just the numbers of visitors, but what they do once they’re on your site that makes the difference between reaching your business goals, or not.

How much do daily numbers matter? Look at the trends.

Because traffic will naturally vary from day to day, daily stats often aren’t as useful as the bigger picture.

Most webmasters focus their attentinon on larger trends – percentage changes month-to-month or this year vs. last year – rather than to day-to-day results.

Daily visitor numbers vary for an infinite number of reasons. Most of it depends upon who happens to search for a particular topic, click on a link, or see a social media post on that particular day. Just as brick-and-mortar businesses don’t have the same numbers of visitors every day, neither will your website. The results will naturally vary somewhat from one day to another.

There are also larger trends and cycles, too. For instance, many websites get less traffic in summer, when people are more likely to be outside and less likely to be surfing the web. And, during the holiday season, shopping and baking sites see a spike, with a decline afterward. Love poetry and floral sites get a boost prior to Valentine’s Day.

Daily stats can be useful for seeing the results of advertising campaigns; comparing stats for the days your ads run to the days just before and after can help you gauge how much additional traffic it drove to your site.

Traffic sources: search engines, social media & more

Where are the visitors to your website coming from? Knowing this can help you focus your efforts.

Some of the reports – for instance, AWStats – show referers to your site. The referer is where people came from before visiting your site. If they found your site in a search, it could be Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, or another search engine. It could be Twitter, Facebook, or another website. Or, it could be from a link on another site.

The numbers of visits generated by search tend to be somewhat more consistent than those coming from social media. This is because while high rankings for Google search are difficult to achieve, those rankings tend to be (fairly) stable as long as consistent effort is applied to keep them.

By contrast, social media can deliver more immediate – but less consistent – results.

Social media is ever-changing, and results often depend upon the right people seeing and sharing your message within a fairly narrow time frame of your posting it. Posts from previous weeks are rarely seen.

If you’re driving traffic to the site via social media, a popular post can generate a lot of traffic! However, a post that doesn’t find its audience can lead to weaker numbers.

[Tip: Always promote your posts multiple times! Social media moves fast and your followers may not see your post the first time. With social media it’s always about catching the right people at the right time.]

Ideally, webmasters should focus on multiple sources of traffic: search engines, social media, and making connections with websites about similar topics.

A note on referral spam: In the referers section of your stats report, you may see many spammy links – maybe to Russian, Chinese or low-quality sites. Rest assured, these are fake; there aren’t really links to your site from those sites. This is called “referral spam,” and it happens to every site.

These spammers make repeated requests to your site, using the (spoofed) address of their spammy site. While it will appear that a visitor came to your site from the site in question, that won’t actually be the case. They’re hoping that you’ll see their links in the report and click them. (Don’t do this!) Just ignore these sort of referrers. Every site gets many of them, and it is pretty easy to see at a glance what’s probably legit and what isn’t.

What do your visitors want?

Take a look at the most-visited (and least-visited) web pages on your site; they’ll give you valuable information about the types of information your visitors want to read – and what they don’t. Analyze what’s successful and what’s not, and consider rewriting the less-successful pieces to improve them.

Some stats reports show the keyword searches which brought visitors to your site. These can provide valuable insight as well. Are there topics which your visitors show interest in, but are not well-covered on your site? What would they like to see more of?

Summing up

Analysis of your stats reports can help you understand your visitors, what they’re looking for, and which methods of promoting your website are working best. These reports can give you valuable clues as to how to make your website more successful.

What do you think?

Do you use any of these stats reports? Please share your thoughts!

A Roundup of 11 WordPress Hosting Companies

Just about any webhosting company can host a WordPress website, but there are some hosts out there who specialize in doing just that.

WordPress sites – especially if they’re of some size – can require more resources than other types of sites do. And, certain server configurations can make WordPress run faster and more reliably.

WordPress-specialized hosts know the ins and outs of WordPress and have set up their hosting servers to accommodate WP sites very well. Many will even manage your site to make sure it’s up-to-date and running smoothly.

There are a growing number of WordPress sites out there; here are the ones we like best. Check out their websites for more details!

1. Page.ly

Pagely was the first WordPress-specific webhost. They offer 3 packages: $24, $64 and $149. All plans offer automatic updates for WordPress and plugins. They put an emphasis on security and speed. Page.ly has been hosting and managing WordPress sites since 2006; their long experience is a huge asset. You can’t go wrong here.

2. WP Engine

WP Engine has 3 basic plans from $29/month (for 1 site and up to 25K visits per month) and up.

They’re the big fish in the WordPress hosting pond, offering a very high level of service and features: fast servers, reliable uptime & a commitment to customer service. And, they’ll help you if you need help with WordPress. That’s worth a lot.

These guys really know WordPress, and they offer a 60-day money-back guarantee.

3. Lightning Base

Lightning Base offers managed hosting plans from $9.99 up. They have a reputation for reliable hosting and excellent customer service.

4. Pressable

Pressable is reliable, fast, and easy WordPress hosting with features specially created for businesses and developers. If you’re a WP developer, Pressable offers an ideal environment for your clients’ sites, as well as your own.

They offer packages from $25-90/month, as well as dedicated packages for very high-volume sites.

5. Synthesis

Synthesis is owned by the company behind the Genesis WordPress framework, Copyblogger Media. They’re super-knowledgeable about WordPress and their hosting plans and their plans offer quite a few bells and whistles. However, they do charge $95 to migrate your site over to their servers. (Most other hosts don’t charge for that service.) Their service runs on MediaTemple servers and their managed packages range from $27/month up to $400. No email services are offered.

6. KahunaHost

Kahunahost offers a managed cloud hosting platform for WordPress sites. Their smallest package is $20/month (for up to 2 domains), while larger packages can host 10 or even 50 domains.

7. WPPronto

WPPronto (formerly WPCDN) offers WordPress hosting from $30-$200 monthly.

8. HostLikeToast

Host Like Toast gives you several options for hosting your WordPress site, with plans from £15 up. They’re based in Northern Ireland.

9. WordPress.com

WordPress itself has recently begun offering VIP cloud hosting. You can get details at vip.wordpress.com.

10. Flywheel

Flywheel is toward WordPress hosting for web designers, creative agencies, and freelancers.

11. Kinsta

Kinsta provides fast, expert hosting for WordPress. Backups are made to Drop, and a CDN is included. They have packages ranging from $27-$97.

That’s it! Do you know of other good WordPress hosts? Tell us about it below!