Many sites will include media files – photos, images, video and audio.
These can help to make a website look attractive and engaging to readers and, depending on the site of type you’re running, you may be using a lot of these.
The problem is, as you’re site gets busier and more popular, the cost of hosting such files can become a major pocket-drainer. Most hosts charge for extra bandwidth and a suddenly popular article or update can send your bandwidth use soaring.
Smart site owners can save themselves a small fortune by offloading the hosting of video and audio to third party services.
Uploading your content to a service which allows you to embed it into your website without hosting the files yourself will help keep your running costs down and your website running speedily.
For video the obvious free choice is YouTube but there’s also Vimeo and a paid service is available at Brightcove.
Similar services also exist for audio content including Soundcloud and our favourites, AudioBoo which helps readers of MayorWatch® listen to news both within articles and via iTunes.
In most cases it’s not necessary to host image files at third party sites – though some site owners do use services such as Flickr – provided you understand how to optimise them for the web.
When developers talk about ‘optimising’ an image they’re referring to adjusting the physical size (the dimensions of the image) and the file size (how many megabytes the image is).
If you’re placing an image next to an article and it’ll only appear as a 300 x 250pixel version, there’s no point uploading the entire original file and them using the CMS of code to force it to appear at the size you want.
It’s far better to spend a few minutes shrinking the image to the size you’ll be using it at and then upload it. This will not only save you paying for unnecessary bandwidth, it’ll also help your pages load quickly – an important goal if you want to keep your readers on your site.
