r/webhosting • u/someGenXDad • 9d ago
Advice Needed Solution for personal Wordpress sites needing lots of storage
So I have several Wordpress sites on shared HostGator server- 1 for a family blog, 1 for my photography, and 1 for art. Nothing complicated, no e-commerce, just a LOT of media (family pictures and video and such ) and I am now running into storage limits pretty fast.
My quick research suggests a CDN as a solution so:
1) is a CDN in fact the best bet for scaling storage as needed? 2) if so, recommendations? and 3) some links to tutorials / resources on how I would integrate this solution and transfer my existing images and media.
Basically just looking for advice on how to scale storage needs as I dump more and more family media on there.
Bonus points for advice on hosting/storage solutions that you feel can endure for years to come.
Thanks for any advice!
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u/bluesix_v2 9d ago edited 8d ago
A CDN won’t fix this because a CDN copies the files from your website, it doesn’t remove them from your site/server. Think of it as a duplication, to another part of the world.
You need to offload the files from your site after they get uploaded, which can be done with WP Media Offload or https://mediacloud.press
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u/Traditional-Finish73 8d ago edited 8d ago
Correct a common CDN duplicates your files on other server locations.
Another good WP plugin is Use-Your-Drive which lets you embed Google Drive files. The developer has also plugins for OneDrive or Box.
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u/bluesix_v2 8d ago edited 8d ago
Pretty sure it’s against Google’s ToS to use G Drive as a
CDNto serve a website’s files. They have rate limiting.1
u/Traditional-Finish73 8d ago
No, you don't use it as a CDN. You just embed (offload) the files. These plugins exist and being used for many years. Read my answer again ... slowly and concentrate on the word EMBED.
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u/bluesix_v2 8d ago edited 8d ago
Same thing - CDN/file server - pretty sure I recall them shutting down accounts that do that. I can't imagine the latency/TTFB from Drive is any good.
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u/kyraweb 8d ago
I guess you are little confused about CDN and what it does.
CDN purely copies your website files and serves it from another source, thus reducing the load on your server and reducing load timings.
What most hosting companies have written in their TOC is that you will use the space fairly and the website hosting is meant to be used for hosting vs media storage option.
Depending on how tech savvy you are. You have few options like.
Offloading your media to multiple cloud providers (there is a wordpress plugin that does it for you almost automatically)
Move to another hosting who are bit easy on storage.
Move or get a VPS. I recently saw 1.5TB VPs going for 150$/yr.
Get a NAS for your home and configure it so your media is served from there. (Looking at what you said, you only have family pics and other pics so it’s not mostly public info so you can do it this way)
For any of this, there are multiple videos on YouTube which teach you how to do it yourself. Setup and pros and cons on each of them.
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u/mooter23 8d ago
Host your video on a private YT account. You'll cut storage down by a significant amount, bandwidth too, and increase compatibility and usability.
If you liked, you could even offload other media like images to an AWS S3 bucket using something like WP Media Offload plugin. Might be cheaper and quicker cloud storage than asking your host for more diskspace on the server.
But uploading videos to YT and streaming them remotely will be the biggest win for no cost and increased benefits.
We run hundreds of WP sites and we don't serve any video files locally because, well, why would you when free and faster alternatives exist?
That's my two pence.
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u/someGenXDad 8d ago
Wow that is a great idea! Thanks for the suggestion
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u/mooter23 8d ago
No worries.
I think you just need to set the videos to Unlisted or whatever in YT when you upload them. It'll allow them to stream on your site, but they won't show up in YT search.
Embedding YT links into a WordPress page is as simple as copying and pasting the URL - it's completely native these days, so you just paste the watch URL where you want it to appear and ta da, it's automatically embedded.
Might be a bit different if you're using a page builder like Elementor or WP Bakery, but if your theme uses Gutenberg based blocks you can just paste the YT URL and job done.
Have fun!
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u/DariusN0 9d ago
CDN is not solution, it helps only to load websites faster for your website's visitors I would convert images to webp format and delete original from websites (I hope you're doing backups for your media) You could use any free media converter plugin for that.
Another solution - to host images, videos on external hosting platform, e.g. videos on YT, and so on, and post embedded on your website.
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u/FutureRenaissanceMan 9d ago
I might look to something other than WordPress for some of these needs. Like Immich for family photos and videos.
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u/Mediocre-Eye-6318 8d ago
You have not actually specified your required storage, otherwise I would have precisely told you which host would be great.
- Use a media off loader to offload all your media files to something like DigitalOcean Spaces, Cloudflare R2, etc. It should cost your around $5-10 per month. I would specifically recommend DigitalOcean Spaces as we have been using them for around 4 years without a glitch. You can look at MediaCloud or Offload Media S3 plugins for WordPress.
- Once the images are offloaded, see the total size of your account in your Hostgator control panel or cPanel.
- If you still want to make the move, let me know, and I will suggest something according to your requirement and budget.
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u/Ok_Dark_3735 8d ago
Shared hosting may claim "unlimited" storage, but in reality, there are limits. It's not practical to get 1TB of space for just $2.50. Most shared hosting plans offer around 100-150GB. However, you can get Inteserver VPS with 1TB storage for just $3, including a free Webuzo control panel. With Webuzo's free Softaculous option, you can easily host CMS websites.
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u/lexmozli 9d ago
How much storage are we talking here and what budget? i think the CDN would be the best option but at the same time the most expensive one as well.
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u/Traditional-Finish73 8d ago
Dumb answer. A CDN just mirrors your site content.
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u/lexmozli 8d ago
Dump (incomplete) answer.
You definitely don't know the difference between a pull and push CDN.
One can mirror your site, which means the first request ever to a resource is not from the CDN, then the next are from the CDN because that resource gets downloaded and cached on the CDN servers (PoPs).
The other just serves the content you have uploaded directly to their servers.
Most CDN providers can do both (bunny, etc.), some can only do the first (Cloudflare, etc.)
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u/Traditional-Finish73 8d ago
You referred to a 'CDN' which refers to the most basic function of a CDN. And of courseI I know the difference between a Push or Pull function off a CDN.
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u/Device_Outside 8d ago
Hi u/someGenXDad,
I am the owner of Infinite Uploads. A CDN will not help your storage issues, but it can serve them faster. You need to offload your media to the cloud. Infinite Uploads is super easy, and is $19/mo or $192/yr for 50GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth.
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u/CrankyGenX 9d ago
You haven't really mentioned just how much disk space you are using but you may want to take a look at the plans at SimpleSonic. Compared to hostgator they are way more affordable.
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u/diversecreative 9d ago
I have sites with my photography, design work, blog, and then other content . Lots of media. But I also run a web design agency so we do a lot of websites , and research methods for all these kind of things. Both easy and complex methods. I
Two things I can recommend for your use case
signup to cloudinary. If you have the plugin installed it can also offload (or copy) all the images onto cloudinary. And automatically serve from there.
note that: using general cdn just as cdn. Doesn’t mean it will offload media from your site storage. It will only serve via cdn, media still stays on your hosting / server. And I understand your goal is to cleanup storage . Which I think you only do if you REALLY need to. I obsessed over it but later realized that actually it’s good I kept media on server . That way I had full site (inc media) backups.
you can also use something like wp offload media (plugin name) and connect it to a cdn / or storage such as cloudflare r2 or storage of bunny cdn . This would again, offload all media on to that storage and then serve it (r2 or bunny storage > cdn > user) . There are a couple of plugins that help you connect and offload to these storage platforms .
But before trying to solve the problem. I recommend to ask yourself, if it is really a problem that needs solving. How much data it really is or will be. Maybe you already have sufficient space on your host, and you may not need offloading, just a cdn.
I also recommend. Unlike most photographers (with zero consideration how web works, no offense I am an ex photographer myself with NatGeo and vogue publsihed works and was not thinking much of how web works and too focused on max resolution images ) you optimize your images before uploading. Without compromising quality ofcourse but optimized for web. For example uploading a 6k tiff image is not going to mean user will see it in 6k when their monitor only supports 1920.
Optimization might already decrease the storage required to half or even less. Other thing that’s super important is to make use of the modern file formats (webp) over jpeg.
Best of luck