JumboClicks.com Hosting Services are designed to support websites for Small and Home based businesses. If your traffic levels are high due to visitor traffic then special provisioning not available in a standard account or even multiple dedicated servers may be required to maintain your website. The volume of visitor traffic is not the only factor when understanding availability. Spikes in traffic, Load due to software Processes, Your use of Caching and many other considerations factor into Availability and total possible visitor count.
The number of visitors that you can support will depend on many factors.
The three most important factors on how much traffic you can have include:
Account Transfer Limit – This is how much data your site can display to visitors every billing period.
The Load or CPU Time required to display your site – This is a preset limit on shared accounts allowing all customers to have enough power to display their sites under the terms of their account while letting others also share resources.
Data Storage Limits – To a lesser degree the amount of data that you can store will also place limits on how many visitors you can support.
Selecting the Right Account
If you are just starting off you can normally expect light load until your website becomes popular however these conditions can change quickly and dramatically when word of mouth spreads.
If you already have a website that attracts a large number of visitors you should probably not select the starter package for your account. Starter Packages have a number of limits placed on them other then just Transfer, Load and Storage and you can expect that your site will not be reachable or features will not be available for the management of a popular website.
Although it is possible to upgrade your account if you run into limits your account could be suspended if you exceed the limits of your account. For this reason it is important that you monitor your use of your account and respond to any notifications from us. Under the Terms of Service Agreement we are not required to provide you notification prior to suspending an account that exceeds it’s resources and automatic processes may suspend your account until you resolve the problem.
How to Improve Your Hosting Experience
Optimization of your website is always important whether you are on a standard account or hosting a huge website like Google, Yahoo or Facebook.
Image sizes should be actual for your site and you should not upload large images and then display them as smaller previews through html or css code. This will increase the time it takes for your visitors to download your pages and also waste your account resources. Using an image editor to crop and re-size your images before uploading them is important. You can also use one of the many web browser plugins or free website diagnosis sites to tell you how much data is being transferred to display your site.
Videos Although it is possible to upload and display videos from your account this is one of the easiest ways to run into your transfer limits. A typical 10 MB video that is viewed by ten visitors will require 100MB of traffic. If you multiply that by the number of days in your billing period you can see that you can easily extend yourself. The best solution is to do as the professionals do and upload your video to a video hosting site like YouTube then use their Embed Code to display it on your page. This may even attract more customers to your site because your videos will be accessible on YouTube unless you modify the settings to limit who can view your content.
CPU Load Websites that rely on a lot of applications to display the content can run into load problems when their visitors increase or new features are added. Remember that you must ensure that your applications work correctly and even open source projects can cause problems. You will want to make use of Caching Options within your CMS application to provide a HTML version of your site to visitors after the page has been viewed once. Cache expiration times will also need to be tweeked to provide optimal performance.
The use of a CDN may improve your performance and reduce load. There are many services that offer a CDN service however most will charge for providing your content on their platform. If you use a CMS product like WordPress you should look into plugins that can ease your use of this type of service.
E-Newsletters & Mass Emails – Every account will have limits placed on the amount of traffic and your terms of service and specific account agreement will have limitations on the number of and speed of delivery of email through your account. If you expect to run a email list that sends out email to your subscribers make sure that you are within your limits or your account will be in violation. This could cause suspension or cancellation of your account. Remember Spam is never allowed and will result in Termination of your account.
Final Note
Optimizing your website is important and there are many ways to improve performance that are free. This does not mean that optimization can reduce your costs for hosting once your site becomes extremely popular.
As your Website begins to reach the limits of your Account notice emails from Support may be sent to give you time to make changes however it is always up to the customer to monitor their use of the service and stay within the limitations of the Account they purchase.
If a site is found to exceed its use of resources it can be suspended or closed without notice to ensure proper function for other customers.
If your site needs expanded resources then VPS virtual private servers or Dedicated Servers may be required.
Always refer to your Account Contract and Terms of Service Agreement on specific limitations and features of your specific account.
