Word Press and Host Gator
For those of you with Word Press and Host Gator, do you check your disk and file space? I started with this platform in 2016 with help from my grandson. He set me up under his Pro plan and he was my go-to-fixer-upper guy. But then he set me up under the Hatchling plan which was fine for the amount of blogging I did.
Well fast forward ten years later and I’m over my limit on updrafts and uploads! Needless to say when I got my renewal notice the amount for 3 years was over $1000!! They moved me from Hatchling to Pro plan!
I had three weeks to figure something out so I went on Host Gator’s live chat to see what I had to do to stay in Hatchling. Thankfully I had two very helpful customer service representatives that helped me get out of my pickle.
The first thing I had to do was delete a LOT of my uploads and then resize some photos. Resizing photos is a big part since the larger the photo the more space it takes in your upload files. I started from my 2014 photos and deleted ones that weren’t really important. Then I was instructed to get back to customer service and they would see how my percentages were.
The next conversation was them telling me what I had to do to lower my percentages. Now I’m not the brightest when it comes to all this technical stuff but he patiently talked me through it and even sent screen shots of what he was talking about.
I had to go to my file manager, then click public html to WP content to updraft and lastly uploads old. I did that but they still showed they were not deleted. I told him I had deleted many uploads but when he checked they were still in the trash which meant it was still affecting my files. So he walked me through the trash deleting process.
I must have been on live chat for a total on an hour or longer with the second very helpful representative. He went back and checked and I was close to being at Hatchling level and I knew I could delete more uploads since I only deleted up to 2017. But I was running out of time, had to be completed by the end of April. So I decided to bump up to the Baby level for only about $50 more per year than Hatchling but it gave me more disk and file space plus it didn’t put me under the gun of running out of time.
So I’m back in business, some of my early blogs from when I did reviews don’t have any pictures but they are so old the products probably aren’t even around anymore. I’m just glad I was able to complete this project without having to pay $1000 to renew!
I seem to do a lot of learning as I go and this was definitely a great learning experience. From now on I will keep a close watch on my percentages so I don’t have any big surprises in the future.
I am happy with Word Press and Host Gator and even happier with the customer support of received from them. By the way, this is my FIRST ever blog I wrote without any photos other than my feature image.
Whoa, what an ordeal! Over all though, thanks to a lot of your hard works, it sounds like you got off lightly, and the customer support did a great job as well. Now keep blogging!
I was sweating bullets at first trying to figure out how to reduce files and uploads Tamara. But customer support was super and didn’t rush through the explanations even after I told them I didn’t understand where to locate something.
Martha, I am so glad you were able to save $1000 with deletions and file size reductions! I have Bluehost. I wonder how big my storage totals are? 🤪
I tried to do it by myself but I got to the point where I was running out of time and patience on my end Kebba. My storage limit was 10G but O opted to go higher instead of trying to reduce all my files. It saved my sanity. LOL
Such a helpful post! I never think to check my upload space—this is a great reminder. Glad the support team was so patient and you avoided that $1,000 bill!
They were great Jasmine and didn’t rush through their explanations.
There are plugins for wordpress that help. I like TinyPNG for image compression. Compressing your existing images can save loads of space.
I NEVER KNEW THAT Kandas! Thank you for that helpful tip! I added the plugin and while I can only compress 500 each month on the free plan, once I go through and delete some old photos I’ll be able to catch up and hopefully stay ahead of the game. Again THANK YOU for that tip.
I don’t have any experience with WordPress. I have a dormant blog that I haven’t posted on in a few years with Blogger so when I started my new blog I went back to Blogger as it’s what I know. I don’t know if I have the bandwidth it takes, mentally, to try and learn WordPress.
I’m glad you are getting it figured out. It sounds like their tech support is good.
I had no problem figuring out WordPress Barbara, I learn as I go but after my grandson set me up on my one plan, I needed to find a hosting site and at the time Host Gator seemed good.
Martha, I’ve been using WordPress for a long time. I don’t know what Host Gator is or Hatchling level. I started out on free plan, then personal. I tried the pro plan for a year for more media space. But wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t use that much that year. So I went back to personal plan. I was told I was over my limit! I was not happy that I lost space I paid for the year before. So now I’m back to the freebie version. I deleted almost all my media file. I changed the theme back to almost the same one I started with. I’m happy with it and will experiment more before going paid version again to rid the ads. Not sure how much blogging I will do after April.
I started out with the free version also Lily but when my review blogging took off I needed my space. I don’t know enough of the workings of the site so I just try to learn while I blog. When you go on the paid WordPress you choose which plan, Hatchling is the smallest with 10G of stoarge but I went over that and wasn’t notified. But customer service was very helpful.
I need to go do some resizing and cleaning up too so I don’t start using up my space.. and thanks for the reminder Martha. Always inspired by you
The large photos take up the most space Vidya so now I’m going through all my photos and many from my reviews back from 2012 through 2017 I’m just deleting the photos. It will be a long process but worth it in the end. It’s also great that I learned this!