How To Optimize My Web Hosting Account | Host Insider

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When you choose a web hosting company to host your web account, you probably keep all your requirements in mind and then pick the ideal one. After you purchase the account, there can be issues regarding to disk space, e-mail accounts, site speed etc. Handling these issues is not a big deal, they can be easily resolved if you maintain your web hosting account properly.

In this post, I have outlined 5 ways to optimize your web hosting account.

1. Selection of decent web host – Choosing a new host is a tricky process because there are a lot of companies in the market providing web hosting services. Not all the companies offer the perfect solutions because they differ in a lot of factors. When it comes to picking the ideal web hosting company which provide reliable hosting solutions, you need to put your own efforts in research. Now the question arises, “How can you do it”?

First and foremost need of hosting is that you choose a decent web host which pay attention on all the requirements, including accessibility (cPanel,SSH,FTP), security, pricing, customer support, stability etc. Before you spend a big amount of money in hosting your website, clear all your requirements and then go with the best one.

2. Disk space optimization – You have purchased a hosting account which is able to fulfill the disk space requirements at current level. But, in future, due to the unknown issues the disk space may appear small. Now you need to analyze what is going wrong? It may be due to the increased data in the database or the softwares you have installed or can have other reasons. In such situation, what can you do?

The below points will help you to optimize the disk space

Delete old emails from webmail accounts – There are no means to keep the mails that have no use. You can filter the old mails that you find useful and can download them and delete the rest.

Remove the test files – Once you have done testing, delete the old testing files to save the disk space.

Disable the traffic scripts – Avoid the use of traffic analysis tools such as Awstats, Webalizer which unnecessarily occupies the disk space. Instead of these tools, you can use the online traffic analysis services like Google Analytics, Open web analytics

Don’t keep the log files – Once you download and view the log file, it is good to remove them from the server.

Make the CSS external – You can save a lot of disk space by making the CSS files external. External stylesheet makes the page load faster by minimizing the code.

Avoid the use of Flash for videos – Try to avoid the use of flash for videos in the web pages. Instead of flash you can use another HTML 5 video tag

Restrict the users to upload any media – You have a limited disk space, so don’t allow the users to upload their own media like images, videos etc.

Use external options to host the media – If your website contains heavy videos, images or any other downloadable media files, you can prefer the other option like YouTube, MediaFire, Flickr etc to save the hundreds of Kitobytes.

3. Optimize files and folders – Along with the disk space it is also important to optimize the files and folders. Here is how can you do it.

Content Compression – When the user makes a request, the content of the website moves from server side to client side and vice versa. It comparatively takes more time to process the request when the content is not compressed.  Compressing the website content can highly diminish the request processing time resulting in the increased website performance.

One of the best way to compress the content is with Gzip. Compressing the content vary with the server type such as Apache 2.x use mod_deflate, Apache 1.3 uses mod_zip etc.

Avoid redirection as possible – URL redirection is sometimes used for the purpose of redirecting the visitor from the old page to the new one. Each redirect needs an extra HTTP request which results in slow loading speed of the website. Thus, it is recommended not to use redirection until it is necessary.

Reduce DNS lookup – According to the Steve Souders, splitting the components into 2 to 4 host names can greatly reduce the DNS lookups resulting in high speed parallel downloads.

Host asset separately – The response time of website highly depends on the components it includes like images, javascripts, web graphics etc. Each of these components needs an addition HTTP request resulting in slow response time. These components can be called as assets. However, it is not recommended to host the assets separately but it adds additional value to the performance if hosted separately.

4. Webmail Optimization – If you are taking the hosting services from Hostgator, you will get 3 options to access the mails Roundcube, Horde and Squirrelmail. However, all the three are good, but the Horde comparatively provides a better User Interface than the other two. In your webmail account keep the below things in mind

Don’t give unnecessary space to the emails.

Don’t create unnecessary emails to save space

If there is any unnecessary account created, then delete them.

5. Avoid SEO Packages – In the cPanel of Godaddy and other hosting companies, you may find the option for “SEO Packages”. These packages should be avoided because it makes use of automated submission which doesn’t have any SEO benefits. These automated submissions are done with the help of tools which doesn’t focus on the website quality and authority. Thus, there is no means to use such kind of SEO Packages and you should always avoid them.