Web Hosting 101 for Photographers

Whether you know it or not, as a photographer you have special web hosting needs. Ensuring that your site visitors experience the best your photography has to offer is critical. To accomplish this goal, as it relates to hosting, you need two main things: storage space and bandwidth.

Storage
As a photographer you know the amount of space that your photos take up on a hard drive. Granted, your images will likely not be stored on your website in their RAW format, but they still require a lot of space. Therefore, when shopping for a web host it is important to see how much space the hosting company is going to give you.

Many hosting companies will offer you what seems like large amounts of storage space, but it has been my experience that fining a host that offers unlimited storage space is the best way to go. When it comes to pricing you can typically find a host with unlimited storage at, or even below, the cost of hosts that have limits on storage.

Bandwidth
In web hosting, bandwidth it the term used to describe the amount of data transferred to or from a website or server. Now, each host will have different rules regarding how much data you can transfer. Exceeding your transfer limit can mean big $$$ in overage fees. As a photographer, you want to put your best foot forward. This often means having lots of high quality images on your website. The more (and bigger) the images, the more bandwidth you’ll use.

My rule of thumb is to go with a hosting company that offers a hosting plan with unlimited bandwidth. If you do chose a company that has a limit on bandwidth, go for the plan with the highest bandwidth you can afford.

Anything else?
Well, sure. But unless you’re building a $50,000 website that will have 20,000 visitors per month, then you’ve got enough info to get the ball rolling. So, what are you waiting for? Go find a web hosting company!