Bandwidth

If you've been on the internet for a while, you undoubtedly have heard many times, the word "bandwidth". Bandwidth refers to the amount of data which is sent and retrieved from one source to another on the internet. It is a term commonly used by both Internet Service Providers and Web site Designers in reference to tracking and limiting the data that is transferred using their services.

Most websites are restricted to a certain total monthly bandwidth allowance. Every file on your website is a different size. For example, you have a web page with a file size of 12kb and you have 3 images on that page each of which is 20kb for a total of 60kb. You also have a midi sound file with a file size of 28kb for a total of 100kb of data transferred to your visitor when they load your page. When that 100kb page is loaded ten times into a visitor's browser, 1MB of data is being used up.

Images, movies, music and software files are the largest contributors to your bandwidth usage, so you should try to limit the size of these types of files when possible.

Before you sign up with a web host, make sure you are aware of their bandwidth policy as well as their acceptable use policies. Many will claim "unlimited" or "unmetered" but you should always be a bit wary of these offers. You may one day find yourself being billed for additional charges or your web site temporarily unavailable and not understanding why.

So how does one conserve bandwidth?

Don't put all your images on one page. The best practice is to use a thumbnail with each linked to its larger counterpart.
Put your content on multiple pages. It will result in shorter load times and you'll lose less visitors.
Avoid BMP files as these are uncompressed images and are the largest file size of all the graphic images. When building your website, use JPGs, GIFs and/or PNGs which are all compressed formats.
While the urge to include MP3s on your website is difficult, they should be avoided. Consideration to using MP3s also revolves around copyright issues which dictates that you have permission to use said files on your website.
Change the names of your image files frequently to help avoid "hot linking", one of the major influences on bandwidth.

So before designing and or buying hosting for your site, always think about bandwidth.

Back to Tips and Tricks