Reduce your website’s bandwidth and storage usage

Categories: Web development

If you are looking for a quick and easy solution for using big files (movie files for example) on your website without wasting your website’s bandwidth and storage then read on.

When you host a media on your website it takes the storage on your site and when the users view that media it takes up your bandwidth too. If the media file is small then you probably don’t have much to worry about. But when you want to use some media files that are large in size then it can have a significant impact on your site’s storage and also when the users view it, it takes up your bandwidth. Now if you have limited storage and limited bandwidth on your site like mine then you can try this method that I use to save bandwidth.

Say for example, you want to host a movie file. you can upload that file to YouTube and link to that file from your website or embed it on your website. The bandwidth is always taken from the site truly hosting the file. So if you embed the video from another site(YouTube in this case), anytime a user buffers and plays the video, the bandwidth (for the video) is taken from the original host, not your site. Also you save storage on your site too.

You can use external image providers to host your image files like Amazon S3, Imageshack, Flickr, Photobucket. Also compress your images with an efficient compression settings (What image compression settings to use when converting an image to jpg)

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#1 by ANN on November 4, 2011 - 2:06 pm

i really hope that i read this article 1st before sign up for webhosting.. just sign up since last month with 10gb bandwidth limit and think it will enough.. hitting the limit in 3rd week of 1st months and almost using 75% of limit within 4 days.. hahaha… dont know what else can be done.. any suggestion?

#2 by Ghillie Suit Guy on May 11, 2011 - 5:23 pm

You’ve made some good recommendations to host images off site. I’ve looked into using various solutions. It seems Amazon S3 might offer the lowest cost in terms of a “pay as you go” type model.

#3 by Keith Davis on February 21, 2011 - 1:56 pm

Thanks for the info
I’ve just started using a few YouTube videos on my site so it’s good to know that the bandwidth usage is from the original source.

My WordPress site still uses much more bandwidth than any of my static html sites – much more!
Any other suggestions?

#4 by Ian McLovin on January 31, 2011 - 5:31 am

Bandwith and storage usage is usually neglected by site owners. I’ve got a couple of friends that have encountered problems from disregarding the said factors.
SEO

#5 by Roger on January 19, 2011 - 10:42 am

This is very informative material. This definitely helps my website and helps me accomplish other things I need to do. Thanks for sharing and keep up the great posts.

#6 by John Gamings on January 3, 2011 - 11:15 am

Good advice. I’ve fund that Amazon S3 has been a real lifesaver for hosting videos! They are so dirt cheap that without them my site would be completely screwed

#7 by plombier 1er on November 8, 2010 - 6:17 am

Indeed, this website showed me much more and taught me a lot. The design of this website and very well done.

#8 by lookup email on November 4, 2010 - 5:35 pm

Nice tips. We can take many effective actions like what you mentioned in the post to decrease the bandwidth and storage used by the users. Thanks for sharing the info.
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#9 by ballon en panne on October 19, 2010 - 5:20 am

It is a very interesting website and in addition it is very well done.

#10 by Rapid Prototyping on August 19, 2010 - 1:27 am

I think this is excellent information for all those who are looking for limiting the bandwidth usage and storage usage! Many of us are proud of our websites (Mine is a shoes site) except for the fact that it uses up lots of bandwidth because of the high definition like movies in it. I must say after reading the article, I have uploaded all my videos to YouTube and they are sharing the bandwidth for me. Really phenomenal!

#11 by JAMES on June 10, 2010 - 10:34 pm

Thanks for sharing the very useful information. My son does more with this kind of stuff, so I’ll be sending him a link to the site.
Thanks
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#12 by John Media @ dedicated hosting on June 9, 2010 - 10:33 am

Yeah uploading the video on youtube then getting the link url to post it on your site to reduce the memory usage that’s really a great technique saving some space.

#13 by BSN No xplode on May 2, 2010 - 10:13 am