working on applications and technology

Today , there 're so many web hosting company offering 'Unlimited package' for shared hosting, which usually means 'unlimited disk(storage) space', 'unlimited bandwidth' , 'unlimited domain name' and 'unlimted mysql database' for very cheap price, It sounds great, but does it really mean anything?

The question is : How many 'Unlimited' do we need for a normal web hosting?

Disk space requirement

Of cause I 'm not talking about building a software download website, NEVER expect to build a large download website in a shared hosting or your account will be locked sooner or later! You need dedicated web hosting for such kind of website.

But when your 're building a website with normal article , image, some audio and video and other normal file etc. We will calculate the requirement for our disk storage using our own website as an example :

Currently I am using drupal for all of my websites in this hosting account, which means that every article is in the mysql database and the file system only contain the drupal installation file and the image and media file.

This is a screenshot of current month 's usage of the storage and bandwidth.

It really looks small cause we 're just starting the website!

File system storage requirement

File system storage requirement is made up of these components:

• Normal files
• Image file
• Audio and video file
• Mysql database file

Normal file is supposed to grow very slowly cause the drupal system file is constant , they only take up no more then 20M of disk space.

Image file disk space requirement

Image file storage requirement is really up to how much picture you upload, we will calculate using our website which use gif image format:

• One gif image file is no more than 40k and 1M storage can contain about 25 gif images
• If we upload 10 pictures per day, there will be about 150M requirement for the first year.

Comparing to all the Gigabyte(1G=1000M) unit, It really means nothing!

Even if you 're building photo gallery which use high quality image which is usuall exceed 2M. We could store 500 images for every 1G disk space.

Mysql database disk space requirement

Now back to the question of mysql database storage, here 's a mysql database with about 30 articles and another database with nothing after drupal installation.

• It shows that 30 articles only contribute about 2M of mysql database and thus one article only take up 66K disk space.
• Suppose we 're posting 2 articles per day, which will only takes up no more than 50M for the first year

Audio & Video file might take up considerable storage space, But my website will not store that kind of media file, I 'd rather upload those files into youtube and still make it look like that it is in my website.

Conclusion:

Now comes the result for the first year of hosting requirement:

• Normal file: 20M
• Image file : 150M
• Mysql database: 50M

YES, the result is surprisingtly small, a 250 Megabyte of disk space is enough for one normal website for the first year!