Question about webspace and bandwidth and inodes

[JustAsking]

Currently i rent a website from another host and i am unsatisfied about that.

The site i am talking about is a gamesite for all Unreal series, with all the downloads that come with it.
The site itself including downloads takes up some 200 gigabyte of data, from which the site itself including pictures and stuff takes up some 20 gigabyte and the remaining 180 gigabyte is purely downloads. Aside that i run several forums on the site.
Current bandwidth is about 300 gigabyte a month, but still rising each month. I kinda expect its possible the site might grow further and may go over the 1000 gigabyte of bandwith.
Obviously all files on the site are 100% legal and are maps, mods, patches, textures etc for Unreal, UT, UT2004 and UT3.
If i would go rent from HostGator it stays well withing the Hatchling Hostingplan for both space and bandwith.


At this moment my hostingplan with that other company is 300 gig of space and 3000 gig of bandwith which is also far withing what i pay for. Still they complain about bandwidth and see me rather go than stay. On top of that, the site only contains 60 gigabyte of data because the hardrive where the site is sitting on is full. Which means i cannot even upload the remaining 140 gigabyte of data at all. Needless to say that i have had it with that company, specifically since they complained about my account and after that they raised those same accounts to even larger amount of space and bandwidth.

(they even raised the account (for new customers) to 1500 gig space and 15000 gig of bandwith, while they even aren't capable of hosting a 200 gigabyte site.)


My question of course is, if i go rent from HostGator, will i at least get 200 gigabyte (lets say 300 to be on the safe side) of actual space and wont HostGator go complain if the downloads really would go topple 1000 gigabytes a month ?



I also have a queastion about the Inodes

The use of more than 50,000 inodes on any shared account may potentially result in suspension. Accounts found to be exceeding the 50,000 inode limit will automatically be removed from our backup system to avoid overusage. Every file (a webpage, image file, email, etc) on your account uses up 1 inode.

Does that really is about the amount of files or is this about the amount of files adressed at any given moment ?

To sum up some statistics:

Downloadable files: 35000 (mostly zipfiles)
HTML: 20000 (Each page is a frameset made out of 4 html's)
gif: 22000 (all the buttons on the site)

Downloadable files:
The zipfiles, are never replaced, at best new files are added. Which means those files are uploaded once and remain in place all the time.

Exception are some 24 larger zipfiles(aprox 200-300Mb each) that will be replaced each so much months, since they will contain the latest updates. Those are also the files that are responsible for the 90% of the bandwidth each month.

HTML files:
Each page is build from 4 htm files that contain, links, text, pictures and buttons(buttons use a javascript to highlight them)

GIF files:
Those are all the buttons sitting on the site.


Since i am still building on the site, new pages are added steadelly, but for the most part, pages that have been uploaded are done and there to stay and maybe get an update over time. Al together the current site has 80000 files, and mainly the webpages might go add another 50000 files to it.


But if i read ahead in the TOS, than the main problem with the inodes are the backups. And if that is the case, and its technically possible, i have absolute no problem at all if there are never backups being created for my site.

I always asume something can go wrong on the host's end, after all we are all human, and machines can break down despite the best effords For that reason i always have 2 backups stored at my home, and at worse it will take me a couple a days to re-upload broken or damaged files. So if the inode limit is based on backup server stress, and no backups from my site is ever made, no-one ever will hear a complain from my side.

The only thing that is important for me is that the forums database are backud up properly, and that the only exception as far as i am concerned.


I know its alot, and unfortunatelly i am not a rich guy at all , and all dowloads are for free, so no money is comming in from that end. As said it all stays withing the offered hostingplan, except for the inodes. And i simply want to run a site about the Unreal games including all downloads that come with it, and a few forums.
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Cincerelly, JustAsking

[JustAsking]

Ow, thats not nice lol, forgot to say: Hi all
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[Serra]

You didn't say how many visitors a day you get. That would be helpful. However, I'd say that your site is way to large for shared hosting and you should consider a dedicated server. So, you may want to consider add advertising to pay for the server.

[DarkSorrow]

That sounds like a nice site. I don't think that site would work well with a shared environment either. I'm sure you get hundreds of hits a day don't you? You may be better off with an unmanaged Dedicated server when they are available.

[JustAsking]

If i had the money i would rent a dedicated server in a NY second. But as it is i can barelly pay for a web hosting plan, means dedicated is out of the queastion............


As for the amount of visitors, the site has 2000 unique visitors a month and is still rising with 200 - 500 a month (its a relative new site).

On a monthly base visitors view some 40000 htm files which comes down to 10000 actual pages (4 htm frames make 1 page). And most of the downloads come down to those 24 larger files. That also means that having advertisement on the site is pretty useless, since there are not enough people visiting the site(yet).

But on the other hand its pretty straight forward. The site uses 300 gig of bandwidth (package is 3000) and 200 gig of space (package is 350 gig) and the amount of visitors is not that huge at the moment.

Really the only thing is the amount of inodes, and if backups are the problem, i couldnt care less if thats taken off of the site. I rather have the site up and running and deal myself with loss of data in case of a server problem on HostGators end. I use Dreaweaver to create my sites and for that you need to have a full copy of the site at your hands anyway. And the entire site is also stored as backup on daily base on another system at home.

So, worse case scenario i have to reupload the entire site if something goes wrong. I simply run the upload during the night and everything should be restored in 2 nights.
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[JustAsking]

That sounds like a nice site.

Yes, it is a very cool site, and people comming there seem to enjoy and appreciate the site alright

The same goes for another site i have that is solemly dedicated to Unreal alone.

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[GvilleRick]

From what has been posted here previously the problem with the excessive inodes is that your account would not be backed up by HG so you would have to be ready with a backup if there were a problem.

While the plans here do have the disk space and bandwidth you need you also have to stay within the limits mentioned in the TOS in respect to cpu usage. I suspect your current host's complaints would be due more to resource usage rather than strictly bandwidth.

HG does monitor their servers and will suspend an account pretty quickly if it causes problems with server performance. Failure to do so would cause other sites to suffer.

There is no way we can tell you for sure that your site would have no problems here. About all you can do is try it and see. While we can understand that money may not be available to get a dedicated server there are times when sites outgrow shared hosting and you have to either reduce the services you offer to reduce server load, find a way to generate the money for an appropriate server, or move on to something else.

[DarkSorrow]

From my personal experience if a site is html it doesn't use much resources. On the other hand if the site is mySQL driven and PhP it can use a bit of resources if a lot of people hit the site all at once.

[JustAsking]

The problem is, i do have another site (the one for Unreal) running on a different host. And that site is about 50% in size of the problematic site. And that site is already running for 4 years now, and that host never ever had a complain about anything, and the site always runs as a charm. The only problem with that host is, they simply cant give me enough bandwidth (60 gig is the limit). And that host really is a tiny, tiny company, but still is able to run that site without any problems.


And the new site is currently twice as big as the other, with 4 times more bandwidth. And seeing the fact that a small company can run a site half the size without problems i kinda would expect that a much. much larger host can run the new site with ease.

And the only other option would be splitting the site up into 2 or 4 parts and rent space for each of them, though alot cheaper that would still be alot of money for me.
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[JustAsking]

[QUOTE]From my personal experience if a site is html it doesn't use much resources. On the other hand if the site is mySQL driven and PhP it can use a bit of resources if a lot of people hit the site all at once.[QUOTE]

Yup, that was what i am thinking too, and except for 2 forums the entire site is HTML based with javascript for the buttons.

And to be honest, seeing what my host is writing me, i can read between the lines, its all about bandwidth and drivespace, and no mention about resources.
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[GvilleRick]

And the new site is currently twice as big as the other, with 4 times more bandwidth. And seeing the fact that a small company can run a site half the size without problems i kinda would expect that a much. much larger host can run the new site with ease.

It actually can be just the opposite. Some smaller hosts may put fewer accounts on a server or since they only allow smaller sites there would be fewer resources needed. The reason HG (and other big hosts) can offer the resources they have is because most sites don't come close to actually using the space or bandwidth. HG has a 45 day guarantee so you can try it out and see how it works. They also sometimes have unmanaged dedicated servers available which are a pretty good deal for $75.

[JustAsking]

HG has a 45 day guarantee so you can try it out and see how it works.

Yeah, and i am willing to give it a try, but as it it, the site passes the amount of allowed inodes. And i wouldnt mind at all if one of the Hostgator admins would shed his/her light on the subject. I mean, i can sign up, but it means i will break the TOS before i even started, and to me that sounds at least uncool to do towards Hostgator.


Aside that i still would like to know if i really are allowed to fill up 200 gig of space. And i already calculated long ago that the site never will be larger than that. Pages might be added, but as for filesize i doubt it will ever pass the 200 gigabyte since there are simply not enough releases for those games to go pass that.
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