bloody peasants

[calimac]

I just got an e-mail that I presume is real, because none of its links go to flytraps, from my website host. It says I'm approaching my monthly traffic limit, and my site will become unavailable for the rest of the month if I overtake it.

I think I know why that happened. My previous picture-laden post - not the Edward Eager one, but the trip to the tall, thin house - I'd hosted the six pictures, not on Flickr, but on my web site. This was because I'd been frightened off of using Flickr because of the reported problems with its recent changes. I went ahead and used Flickr for the Eager post, and since it was OK, I've uploaded the pictures from the previous post onto Flickr and changed the links, so it's safe to view again now.

But blimey, is one month's traffic on six pictures enough to push the limit? I'd better be cautious with uploads in the future, and hope none of my pages ever get slashdotted.

How should I keep track of traffic? The e-mail provided a link which it said was to a traffic tracking program. But if I click on the link, I get my hosting service's general software page with no trace of such a program on it.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That sounds really weird, considering what gigantic streams some blogs get.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

They probably have higher limits. Mine is 1 gig/month, offered "free" (actually, no extra charge) by my e-mail provider.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I haven't had any trouble with the new Flickr as far as posting photos to it. I hate the new layout, but it functions as well as it ever did as far as I can tell. I think I would have a chat with my website host to see what my traffic limits are if six photos really were the problem.

But how annoying no matter what the trouble was!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure they'd be able to tell me anything. I needed to figure this out myself. The pictures total about 2 megs, and they were all embedded in the blog post, not just linked, so they all came up on each viewing of the blog post. So 500 views in a month would bust the 1-gig limit and less than 400 would trigger the warning I got.

That's not an utterly implausible number for total monthly viewings of my LJ and Blogspot blogs, especially as the Blogspot version of my Eager post got forwarded to a listserve, and perhaps some or all of that went to the blog homepage and not merely directly to the post. My website provider of course can't tell me what my blog traffic is, since they don't host it, but Blogspot can, and the Eager post there alone has had 130 views, far more than I normally get.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Wait - you're mirroring this on Blogger but the photos are hosted on a third location? If you upload directly to Blogger, they'll be hosted on Google's capacious servers and there will be no risk of hitting the third provider's traffic limits.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Does Blogger = Blogspot?

I've been putting my public photos, not just for illustrating blog posts, on Flickr for a while now, and only didn't do it that time because of my fears that Flickr was broken, so I turned to another method that I already knew how to work. One thing I'd have to figure out if I picked a new method is how to acquire the URL for links from the other site. That's annoying enough on Flickr, but at least I know how to do that there.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Yes, Blogger = blogspot. The URL would be

http://.blogspot.com/

I am not having any issues with Flickr myself and have some of my blog photos hosts there.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Argh, let's try that again.

http://blog_name.blogspot.com/

http://irontongue.blogspot.com/

Use angle brackets and LJ interpreted it as HTML.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Speculation:

A) 1 G/month isn't a lot, especially if you don't edit your photos from the original size. For LJ, I always make the file sizes much smaller; from the camera, the jpeg is roughly 6M. Editing to my standard Facebook crop (16" wide) reduces them to the 600-800K range. Much easier to handle (even for FB, which compresses photos), easier to upload, good enough to make 8 1/2" x 11" prints. (Many earlier photos posted to LJ were even smaller than that, before I went to a paid account and had more room.)

B) Most hosting sites have some sort of control panel or stat monitoring software you can access. You can look at what files have been downloaded the most, and other useful things. Some of them have non-obvious names. There might be a tutorial/FAQ on the site. Or call Customer Service.

C) Re "presume it's real": If you're worried, don't click on the e-mail links, go directly to your host site and look for said control panel. If you're really worried, call them.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

1) Five of the photos I did edit down from the original size, largely so that I could greatly enlarge small parts of them; one I didn't bother, and that was responsible for most of the total file size. If I do this again, I'll take the bother.

2) Blogspot has a control panel that gives hit stats. If LJ does, I've never found it. My website host claims to have relevant software, but as I noted I couldn't find it, and I'm disinclined right now to start a chat session to ask them where it is.

3) What I do with links in suspicious e-mails is to read the actual link URL, not just what the message text says, before clicking. These were genuine.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

LJ has stats, but they're by page count not file count. They will give you some idea of traffic, and who's accessing your site. In your profile, under the Profile menu, Stats/MyGuests.

[danceswithwaves.livejournal.com]

You can sign up for Google Analytics for free, as long as you have a Google account. They track traffic to web pages.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Put them behind cuts, or a cut. That way they also won't be a problem for people with limited bandwidth or fee-for-overlimit accounts.