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hi folks, first time in this part of the forum so bear with me.....
i am starting a potentially large website that will offer downloads via the site of visual content for vjs and djs. my question involves the vagaries of bandwith, webhosting and all that stuff, which i am completely new to.
i am building my site myself from dreamweaver, and i plan on making sure the host i chose will be able to grow with me. some sites offer unlimited bandwith and disk storage, but i am not sure what that actually means. does this mean ALL my content is hosted through this site? forgive me, i am REALLY new to this. i also plan on posting articles related to vjing, as well as free downloads and other links. what is the best method of going about this? i want visitors to be able to see the content and download it direct from site (hard copies are also an option).
any sites to recommend? i am looking at at least a potential terrabyte in hosting needs.
Assuming that you are talking about allowing downloading of that TB of data, you won't get very far with the unlimited guys. While drive space and bandwidth is "unlimited", you don't have unlimited use of the CPU, RAM, DB, and other processes on the server, and you'll run out of those far before you serve a TB of data.
Unlimited is really a ploy to help sell folks that want to run a small website, but not worry about limits. Read the TOS and AUP on any of the unlimited hosts and you'll find usage rules that will be enforced if your site gets too big.
With that much content you're looking at a dedicated server for the entire site, or a combination of a good hosting plan (or VPS) and a content hosting service such as Amazon's S3 to handle tho downloadable content. There are positives and negatives to both, but neither are going to bet $10 or$ 15 a month.
It also sounds like you need a CMS, not a hand made site done with Dreamweaver. It will make managing the site far easier than opening Dreamweaver every time you want to add a new item or make a slight change. There are a bunch of good CMSs out there that will allow you to run your business, not try to build a web site.
I've posted about them in the past and got good feedback from the OPs. This is a site that offers a lot of options (including dedicated servers) and is one that a client (Transcriptionist) has used for years. She has been exceeding pleased with the company. There was one glitch and it was handled immediately.
some sites offer unlimited bandwith and disk storage, but i am not sure what that actually means. does this mean ALL my content is hosted through this site?
Yes, the bandwidth limits are for how many GB's of data you can serve, if someone downloads 10 100MB files that's 1 GB off you're limit. Same thing with the storage.
Having said that the "unlimited" part is smoke and mirrors, if you ever have to move onto more expensive hosting these limits are well defined for VPS and dedicated hosting plans because those customers are actually going to use it. Every host offers "unlimited bandwidth and storage" for starter plans so they all play the game..... it's just a marketing gimmick. They realize 99% of the sites on a server using these plans are going to use very little bandwidth and space so they offer these ridiculous amounts. Hidden within the TOS is going to be some vague language about processing power, these are where the real limits are.
Technically if you're building a site with just static HTML pages with links to files you should be able to serve a lot of people but static HTML is harder to maintain as it grows, is not dynamic and doesn't allow for a lot of interaction. If your that 1% that is really going to take advantage of the large limits with some big media files they are going to find an excuse to make you upgrade because of that vaguely worded provision about processing power even though serving static files doesn't require that much.
Most sites are using server side scripting, for example this forum is built on the PHP platform. If you want any kind interaction with your users you need to use server side scripting and that requires more processing power, much more than static HTML pages. If you're serving a lot of pages you'll need to upgrade again because of that vaguely worded provision about processing power.
In any event don't worry about it now. It takes a while to establish a site
wow, this is a wealth of information to peruse. i truly thank everyone for their comments and info. it will all be deeply read and considered. reps to all!!!!!
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