17 Ways to Optimize Your Hosting Space

1. Clean your WordPress (or another script) installation.

Anything that is unused on your WordPress installation should be deleted, like unused themes or plugins which are not active. If you are sure that you will not need then in the future, then it would be best for you to get rid of them. This will help you lighten the load. You should also get rid of other useless assets, like spam comments, broken links, revisions, drafts, etc. This will increase the space on your host’s database immensely, so you should delete anything and everything that is unnecessary. There are hosts that can do that for you and you can check them in our best UK WordPresss hosting review page.

2. Delete any old and useless emails from your web account.

Let's face it; all these emails do is eat up your space. It is better to delete them than to keep them lying around. The ones that you need to keep should be downloaded and saved somewhere safe, while the irrelevant and useless ones should be thrown in the trash. Do not keep them in your database as they will serve no purpose and they will only take up space that can be used elsewhere. Deleting them will allow you to make room for new and more useful emails. More about email hosting you can find here.

3. Test files need to go.

Once you have completed your testing, these files should be deleted as they are also a waste of space. There is only a 5% chance that you will ever need them again and if this happens, then you can make new test files that would be better than the originals. Hence, do not hesitate with this one tip as you will be saving yourself a lot of storage space for other (more significant) assets on your website. Trust me; your test files will remain ignored and unused for all the time you keep them stored in your database.

4. Disable your website’s traffic scripts.

Awstats and Webalizer are two common traffic scripts that many people use and even though they perform very efficiently as traffic analysis tools. However, they take up a lot of space, and they can be replaced by different online services which provide the same services (like Google Analytics). Along with disabling them, do not forget to delete their files and folders. If you cannot disable them, then there is a chance that your current web host has not provided you the permission to do so (in which case, you can contact them and request for permission).

5. Replace your script instead of upgrading it.

If getting an upgrade is too heavy a load on your servers, then it might be a better option to obtain a replacement. If you cannot make the replacement, then tip number 1 is the perfect one for you to follow. However, try your best to get an effective script replacement and avoid upgrading if you don't have enough space, to begin with as upgrades take up more space than you think and this can be problematic for you when you are trying to manage your disk space.

6. Move your subsites somewhere else.

You can move your subsites to another hosting account or a WordPress blog or even to a free package being offered by another provider. Your personal blog can survive on a less expensive host, while your business website needs the best of the best as it is the place that will be visited more in comparison. Hence, prioritize those sites that need the features offered by a good quality host and send those sites packing which does not require too much quality attention from a host.

7. Move all your email accounts somewhere else.

Moving your email accounts will make more room as this means that the contents of your inboxes and outboxes would also move with them. Email forwarders, email apps that you have made use of and even your computer email client should be shifted elsewhere so that you can make room for the more significant features and assets that need to remain in your web host database. Thus, consider this move as it will relax your storage space to a great extent and it would allow you to have a greater amount of disk space.

8. Host your media on services provided externally.

Media sources which can cares externally include videos, downloadable packages, images, music files, etc. and all external sources include YouTube, MediaFire, etc. These media files can take up a vast amount of space on your web host database, so it is better to have them provided by external sources (I mean, they're already providing these services, so it's better for you to take advantage of). Hence, take this option into consideration as it can save you a lot of that disk space.

9. Remove the log files.

Log files are quite useful as they allow you to monitor your website’s activity while you are away, but you should know that once you have downloaded them and reviewed them, they are of no use to keep on the server. This will help you free up a lot of your storage space as log files can take up a lot of space and are useless on your server.

10. Remove all your old and unused installations.

You will not need any of these installations anytime soon, so it is best that you remove them from your server. Old script versions and ghost files serve no purpose once they become outdated and are no longer in use, so you should not be hesitant. Cleanse your server of these installations and you will be able to gain enough disk space to last you a couple more months.

11. Your installation backups should be gone.

Many scripts leave on-server backups after each upgrade that they make, and these files are usually only useful when you have to reinstall something that was lost during the upgrade. So, once you are sure that everything is in place after an upgrade, it would be a wise idea to get rid of these backups. These files are also useful if you want to restore the old version (which is highly unlikely). You can find these files in .zip or .tar.gz.

12. Remove any installation doc files.

When you install a script, a doc folder will be copied on to your database which would contain the user guide. While this guide might be useful for you during your installation and use of the web host, it serves no major purpose in enhancing the health of your script, so it is best to delete this guide and free some space that can be used for something of greater relevance. Hence, find the user guide (if it isn't titled doc) and delete it.

13. Do not allow any user uploads.

Do not allow your website users to upload any media files of their own as this would take up a lot of useless space (whether you are running a blog or a forum). Your disk space comes first, so it is best to limit your users and make sure that this is already set while building your website. Deleting such uploads would look quite rude, but if it is necessary, you should do it otherwise the upload will take up a lot of precious space.

14. Common scripts belong with cloud services.

The most common JavaScript libraries belong to cloud services and the like as they can be hosted easily by such services. If you don't host these libraries, there will be a significant amount of space that will free up in its place, and this will even improve your users' experiences by optimizing the script loading time due to your server's caching functions. Thus, there is nothing but advantages from using this one tip to free your disk space.

15. Minimize and externalize your CSS.

This will help to increase your website's efficiency with the use of external stylesheets. As a result of following this tip, your pages will load a lot faster, and you'll be able to save plenty of disk space. You can make your CSS files very light by removing indentations and irrelevant spaces to minimize the code. Keep a minimized version of your stylesheet on the server and a readable version on your computer if you want even more space.

16. Remove Flash to lighten your HTML pages.

Flash is hefty for any server, so it would be a good idea to remove it. Do not use it as a way to include videos on its pages as you will find that all your storage space will be eaten up. Instead, you can use the HTML video tag as a lighter and more effective alternative. So, it's a win-win situation as you can lighten your load and have your videos without the heaviness.

17. Contact your web host.

If your website is completely ordinary and does not contain too many files and scripts, then it would be a good idea to contact your web host as the limited disk space issue might be originating from them. If you are in a situation where your web host has too many websites it is hosting and has allocated a limited amount of space to each of its websites, it might be useful to contact them and negotiate a deal of getting more allocated space. If this fails, then it would be a better idea to move your website to a different host.

Conclusion

Optimizing your hosting space is like maintaining your car. It requires a great amount of attention and care to make the most of the limited amount of space that you have. Also, one of the best parts about using these tips is that many of them have multiple advantages (like making your website load faster, thus enhancing user experience). You need to keep in mind that your website and hosting space comes first and that you need to be greedy and selfish with the way you use it as having full hosting space can have negative impacts on your website.

In the long run, your hosting space can have a great impact on your search engine optimization and the traffic on your website, so it would be best to put in a little extra effort and reduce the space that has been taken up by useless and outdated files. Do not hesitate and get rid of everything that you know is unnecessary. Be brutal in the way you do it and download anything that you think you might need as taking up space on your computer is better than taking up the precious space on your web host. You will be incredibly thankful once you do so.

And if this advice doesn't help nd you need a host with more space, make sure to check the current top UK hosting copmanies at our homepage.