Storage Limits on WordPress.com

I subscribe to the WordPress FAQ Page. I was doing some catch up tonight, reading stuff that normally I don’t get time to do and came across a post that was made at the week-end and it has caused me to rethink the way I do things.

The reason that I get behind in both blogging and reading feeds that I want to read by the end of the week is my other passion. Podcasting. I get bummed if I have not done some blogging done by Thursday because that usually means that it won’t happen until the following week. I am finalising the show notes for The Global Geek Podcast, sourcing music and everything else that goes into the pre and post production. Something has to, usually my personal blog. But I don’t worry too much as I am still blogging in another way, it just does not feel the same. Especially since I try to keep the two separate, I want people to know that I have different things to say to a focused reader/listener base. It is a hard juggling act.

So I was catching up and I saw that there was an FAQ Post called “Upload Space“. I thought… upload space…, isn’t that; sort of unlimited? Realising that I had made an assumption! But then I thought about it and guessed that some people upload huge images and whatever else they might like to and that unlimited would not be practical at all. So I found out that:

“Images and other files are currently limited to 50MB in total.”

When you consider that a blog is a long term project that may well cover years, I don’t think that it would be that hard to fill it. Even if you optimise your images and change the resolution or even use them infrequently. So I thought about what I do and I guessed that it might just be possible for me to eventually use 50MB.

The suggestions made in the post are the usual suspects: Flickr, photobucket and box.net. So I am going to start using my Flickr page for images such as pictures and stuff like that (because you should never, never “leach” another sites content!). But I thought I might use omnidrive that I previously talked about for logos and screenshots or box.net. Although both the latter have a 1GIG limit, for what I do I am going to be hard pushed to fill it. Then again even if the flickr account looks like going close to the bandwidth limit the cost of a pro account (per year) is less than storage at omnidrive or box.net. So I’ll admit, not sure exactly what I am going to do. I like the downloadable applications that the storage services offer but I like the price of Flickr ($24.95USD p.a) and it is unlimited.

The thing that you have to remember is that while a post for you might be ancient history, the page may well be still viewed and appreciated by your readers. If you want them to look the same way that they did when you posted it then you need to look at the ongoing storage of images and pictures that you used in the post. This hosting requirement will grow as time goes on and the number of posts increases. This then means that your bandwidth need increases. How much? That depends what you post and your reliance on images. Food for thought as you may well be thinking about these things as well.

What solutions are other WordPress.com users doing? If anything.

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For that matter if any visitor to WordPress sees a great post then submit it to FanPop. Someone might not think to do it or underestimates their work. Visitors to WordPress; feel free to head over and cast your rank for the stories there.

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It is good to see that there are more of us getting into the FanPop page. Plus after having a poke around the FanPop site it is actually a very good site I am glad that I joined. Keep it up and we will have a nice way to see some of the best posts on WordPress.com. Also please visit //engtech who’s idea it was.

I think that it is also an extension of the great community here at WordPress. It would be good to think in the long term that a good solution is found “in-house”. But I don’t think that is going to happen in a hurry. This is a great alternative until then and lets the admins know what WordPress users would like to see.

Just so you know, I am going into the quiet part of the week. This is the few days where the podcast is prepared for, recorded, edited and all the other stuff that goes with it. So the blog is a tad quiet over this time. But that means that you have to keep an eye out for the next installment of The Global Geek Podcast!