What is Disk Space in Web Hosting?

Disk space is the space available on the server to store your website’s content. Content of your website includes images, databases, videos, files, pages, emails, etc. You can organize your disk space however you wish. This storage space allocated to your website is where all the files, including your logo, images, blog posts, JavaScript, PHP, and CSS files, will be housed. This means the disk space has all the publicly viewable information as well as the files required to operate your website.

Some hosting providers include website backups and emails in the allotted storage space, but some providers offer additional storage space to store emails and backups. Most hosting providers set a storage limit, but some offer unlimited disk space. Read on to know how to analyze your current disk space.

Analyze Your Current Hosting Disk Space

It is important to analyze your hosting disk space often. It is simple and easy to check how much disk space your website is using.

Here are the steps you need to follow to analyze how much disk space your website uses if your hosting provider uses cPanel.

  • Start with logging into your cPanel dashboard
  • Locate the Disk Usage statistic in the Statistics section. Here is where you will see how much disk space your website is using.
  • To check how much space each file is occupying, go to Disk Usage under Files in cPanel. You will now be able to see how much space each file is using.
The steps mentioned above will help you determine how much disk space your website is using, and it will also help you understand which file will require more space.

Quick and Easy Ways to Optimize Your Disk Space

  • Clean Up WordPress Backups
  • Remove Unwanted and Unnecessary Plugins
  • Delete Junk Files
  • Bid Adieu to Flash Elements
  • Remove Installation Doc Files and Backups
  • Say No to User Uploads
  • Remove or Move Log Files

Clean Up WordPress Backups

Some WordPress plugins backup website content on a regular basis. This could be housed in your disk space and it could take up a considerable amount of your valuable storage space. You may not have to worry about it if your storage space is unlimited but if it is limited, consider deleting backups you may not use in the future. If you think you might need those backups later, you can store them on your desktop or use a different storage device to store them. If the backup is taking up a large amount of storage space, try lightening your database by removing or moving unwanted drafts, post revisions, comments, broken links, etc.

You can also consider moving your backup files to cloud storage if you ever think you might need those backups later. By doing so, you can free some disk space.

Remove Unwanted and Unnecessary Plugins

Plugins could take up a lot of disk space. In addition, they also store files and folders. Check for plugins you require and list out the ones you are not using. Remove plugins you are not using and also look for duplicate plugins and delete them. For example, you might have added two different plugins that serve the same purpose. In this case, you can choose to keep one plugin and delete the other.

Delete Junk Files

Spammy comments, old themes that are no longer needed, older unimportant emails, drafts, old posts, uploaded images, and other media files that have never been used, are a few examples of junk files.

Initially, your website may not accumulate such junk files, but over the years, it will accumulate a lot of junk files as mentioned above. So, it is important to check your folders for such junk files and remove them to free up some disk space.

Bid Adieu to Flash Elements

Flash is not being used much these days as it is heavy for the disk as well as the server. So, it is good to avoid using flash and use an alternative like HTML5 video tag to add videos to your website. This is a lightweight alternative to flash, using which you can add animations, videos, and audio to your webpages. HTML5 will not take up a lot of disk space and is also faster than flash.

Remove Installation Doc Files and Backups

In the process of installing a script, a doc folder with a user guide will also be installed. You can use this guide as reference material. Later, you can remove this guide. Removing this doc file will free up some disk space. While removing the doc folder, do not remove the license.txt and README.txt files, as these files may be required at a later time.

Similarly, phpBB and WordPress scripts leave backups every time you upgrade them. They store files in .tar.gz or .zip formats. You can remove these files if you do not require them. However, you can retain these files if you wish to restore the older version after the upgrade.

Say No to User Uploads

Letting your users upload videos and photos will only fill up your disk space. To save the limited disk space, you should not let users upload media files. This way, you can save your disk space.

Remove Log Files

Though log files will help you check your hosting activity later, it is not necessary to save them on the server. All you need to do is to download and review your log files and then delete them. This way, you can free up your hosting disk space.

The same applies to error logs. Open the error log and check what caused the error and delete the log once you fix the error.

Top Hosting Providers

If you are looking for a hosting provider, here is a list of the top hosting providers from which you can choose.

  • Hostinger
  • BlueHost
  • DreamHost
  • InMotion
  • Fastcomet
  • Rochen
  • A2Hosting
  • BlueHost
  • DreamHost
  • Rochen
  • Cloudways
  • GlowHost
  • A2Hosting
  • Nexcess
  • FastComet

Wrapping Up

Hosting disk space is where all the content related to your website is housed. It is important to make sure what files are stored in your hosting disk space to ensure unwanted files do not take up much of your valuable limited disk space. Make sure to keep track of your disk space often to optimize and free it when required.