Last Updated on March 3, 2023
Bandwidth provides a way for web hosts to measure network usage. There are WordPress hosts out there that offer accounts with unlimited bandwidth every month. There are also hosts that offer less expensive packages that come with limitations on how much bandwidth the account can use every month.
If you go over your limit, some hosts will simply replace your page with a blank page and others will continue to allow people to visit your page but will charge you overages on your bandwidth. Overage charges can be expensive, so it’s important to have an idea of how much bandwidth you will need.
The Design of Your Site
The design of your site will largely determine how much bandwidth you consume every month. Sites that have a great deal of graphical content, multimedia content, downloadable content and large pages will consume more bandwidth. Every time somebody visits your website, their computer downloads your webpages. The design of your site, obviously, factors and because the amount of bandwidth you consume is, to a large extent, dependent upon the size of each of the individual pages.
Having a site with validated code that is designed to be fast loading and compact is the best way to make certain that you’re not consuming too much bandwidth when people surf around your site. Generally speaking, professionally designed sites are more compact and easier on bandwidth than sites designed by nonprofessionals.
Downloads
If you plan on offering downloadable content on your website, whether it’s video content, audio content or some other form of multimedia, you’re going to consume a lot more bandwidth than you would otherwise. If you plan to have such a site, make certain that you purchase a plan with unlimited bandwidth or with a great deal of bandwidth available for the account.
This is particularly true if you plan to run a site that broadcasts. For example, if you run live streams of a radio show or a video show, you’ll want to make certain that you have enough bandwidth to accommodate your viewership.
Calculations
As far as the average visitor goes, calculating the bandwidth that they will consume requires you to do a bit of research into your traffic statistics. First, however, you’ll want to get an average size for your pages. Once you have the average size of your pages determined, multiply that by the amount of page views you get every day and by the amount of visitors you get on a daily basis. This will give you a figure for the bandwidth consumed by visitors who aren’t downloading anything.
Take this figure and add to it the number of file downloads multiplied by the average size of the file being downloaded. This will give you an average for people who are coming to your site to download content.
Formula: (total number of visitors + total pageviews + average size of page) + (average number of file downloads + average size of files) + overhead for safety = average daily bandwidth.
The sum of these figures will give you a rough idea of how much bandwidth your site consumes on a daily basis. Add a little bit extra for those days when a lot of people show up and you should have a number that will give you a ballpark minimum for the bandwidth you need.
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