Getting your website up and running for the first time in your new speedy hosting provider can be really exciting. The tools available give you a lot of flexibility in customizing your website, whilst the bandwidth and space should be enough for larger personal sites and some business sites to be hosted without any signs of performance degradation. However, as your site continues to stay online, you may find yourself struggling with the web hosting costs. Here are some ways to keep these web hosting costs down so you can enjoy more uptime for lower costs.

Start with a Low Cost Web Hosting Plan

If you haven’t decided where you wish to host your website, start off with a low cost web hosting plan. Before accepting the plan, read the specifications and make sure your website can support these specifications. See if the amount of space provided is reasonable and if the bandwidth is sufficient. Many of the best hosts offer unlimited space and bandwidth which are excellent choices. If you are spending more money on excess bandwidth, the next four methods can help greatly.

Design and Code Web Pages to be Faster to Load

If you have experience with web development, try to analyze your site code and optimise it using the latest CSS and AJAX techniques. Utilising these techniques can not only reduce the size of your pages for bandwidth savings, but also make the site more attractive and accessible to visitors. Also try to substitute Flash elements with other web techniques if possible.

Use the Best Format and Compression Level for Images

If your site is heavy on images and graphics, you can reduce the file sizes of these files as well to save bandwidth by using any image editing software like Adobe Photoshop to slightly reduce the quality of JPEG files. The difference in quality may not be noticeable if you add a little bit of compression, but the lowered file size can save a ton of bandwidth during heavy traffic situations. You can also try converting some graphics to GIF format if there are only few colours being displayed.

Use File Hosting Services when sharing Larger Files

If your website has a ‘downloads’ section where people get retrieve large documents and other types of media, that may cost you big on the bandwidth. Fortunately, there are plenty of free file sharing sites that offer unlimited bandwidth. Upload the files in these areas and copy the link to your download’s page.

Restrict Certain Areas to Registered Members Only

If you maintain a large website aimed towards a specific audience, valuable bandwidth may be wasted on people that just browse around and do not do anything productive. Add a registration script to your site or blog so that only quality visitors that really want to read your content can get in. This keeps other unwanted visitors at the home page which shouldn’t consume as much bandwidth.

Keep track of your bandwidth and see how much you have saved after trying these tips. If you are confident that you can keep the bandwidth low, you can possibly switch to a lower costing web hosting plan to minimize the heavy costs.

Author Bio: Derek Rogers is a freelance writer living in the UK. He regularly contributes articles for 111WebHost, an industry leading Web Hosting Company.

Category: Internet
Keywords: Web Hosting,Web Hosting Costs,Unlimited Web Hosting,Web Hosting Companies