How much space/bandwidth does this site use?

[gogoboygareth]

Hi all!

This one is directed towards to owner of the site... I've been a member for a while (and have made quite a few posts - well, me whinging about problems with my VXII mainly). So this post isn't someone visiting the site for some sinister purpose (i.e. to spam their wares).

I'm an engineer my trade, and have been doing basic web design for around 10 years (yes, seriously). I've recently begun making small websites for businesses, and have been asked to host a few of them (nothing "mission critical", just basic stuff really).

I've created a few packages for hosting (I'm officially a "reseller" as of this morning)... and the reason for this post is simply to get a feel for the "average amount of space/bandwidth" needed for a forum-based website.

I remember a mod once saying the site used about 8Gb a month - does this still stand? Or is it more than that now?

Basically my plans so far are...

Lite : 150Mb space + 5Gb bandwidth
Standard : 300Mb space + 10Gb bandwidth
Maxi : 500Mb space + 20Gb bandwidth

(everything above is subject to change, as I'm only really just starting and am trying to put together a business plan).

Note this is simply just to get a feel for *what* my plans should be providing, not as an advertisement for a small business I haven't really started yet... Thus, I haven't included any prices.

Many thanks for any info you can provide.

- Gareth
http://www.garethforward.com/pics/

[Darren]

Averaging out over the past 12 months including Dec 04 it works out to be 8.9Gb although the last few months have become much larger for some reason despite the site changeover which is simply baffling.

The last 3 months are as follows
Nov 04 - 13.27Gb
Oct 04 - 10.89Gb
Sep 04 - 10.12Gb

Space wise we are currently using close enough to 1.2Gb although you could chop off 500Mb if you were to take the gallery out of the equation. The database itself is 120Mb in raw form along with a gzipped copy of the database which is sent off to my home machine.

For your information we are paying around $10 per month (I can never remember as we are that far ahead with hosting it isn't funny), this plan comes with 50Gb bandwidth and 750Mb space although I have paid for some and altered those amounts as there were having some problems with space counting a while back.

You will notice the plan we are on doesn't come close to what the host has on its web site as I have helped out the person who runs the host a number of times with sites he runs.

Last I looked we were the largest site on the host in terms of traffic, cpu load and space.

If you need any other information by all means drop another message up and I'll see what I can dig up. I am sure there are others on here which would be interested in the stats as well.

Cheers
Darren

[gogoboygareth]

Cool! Thanks mate, it's most appreciated. And that's pretty good value for $10 a month.

I think the thing that's woken me up a bit is the space you actually use - I had no idea it'd be *that* big! I only plan to host "small business" websites (and non-profit organisations, such as small sporting groups)... hence my much smaller size (as they typically don't require large databases or whopping great image galleries).

I was really curious as to the kinds of requirements a decently run forum-based site would need. And woah, that's a lot of space!

- Gareth

[Darren]

Space I don't think is a huge concern for most places, your aimming in the right direction. Heck we offer 50mb space and 500mb bandwidth at work and we get lots of people joining for hosting. We charge $19.95 per month which even still is pretty good in comparison to other providers out there.

It's a tough one getting into the hosting side of things with all the competition out there then again I know a guy who sells hosting with web pages which I reckon is a great idea.

Glad to hear that was what you were after.

Cheers
Darren

[Bax]

And to give you a comparison.. Calais Turbo has used 150gb in bandwith so far in December.

[Darren]

Here's another comparison for ya, my work uses 150Gb in an hour in bandwidth and 6000+ emails per hours.

[Trewman]

Sites that take up the most space:ware groups.

When I had my hosting company you would get the idiots starting these and uploading illegal files etc..

But yes forums do take up a fair amount of space when they are large.