Knowledgebase

If you have received a disk space warning message, this means that you are approaching the maximum space allocation permitted for your webhosting account type. You should rectify this as soon as possible to avoid service disruption, as when your disk allocation is full, you will not be able to send or receive emails and the performance of any additional services (e.g. your website) may also suffer.

To rectify this situation, you can do one of the 2 following actions;

1. Ask us to upgrade your account to increase disk space (see http://www.purpledogdesign.com/services/web-hosting)
2. Login to your cpanel account and investigate / remove files as necessary

If you would like to discuss option (1) above, please open a new support ticket.  This is the recommended course of action for most clients.

To perform (2) above, follow these instructions;

1) Log in to your website cPanel account,
2) Navigate to Files > Disk Usage >

This will provide a disk usage breakdown for your account.  If you scroll down the page, you can see a further file tree which can be expanded to reveal additional sub-folder size information. Clicking on the tree "+" or ">" sign will expand the folders information so that you can see which folders on the server are taking up the most space. Remember, disk storage space is finite and you will need to manage your disk space if you find you're near capacity.

In most cases, the culprit is either:

A) an images folder - To resolve large images taking up space, consider either deleting those no longer required - or ensure all images are optimisied.  If you have any images above 200k in size, you are not compressing them enough before uploading them.

B) a backup directory - Check to ensure any backups are correctly rotating (deleting old versions before saving new versions) and delete any that are not required.

C) email storage - You should consider "downloading" your emails rather than "leaving a copy on the server".  For example, if you are using an email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird with POP3, you can tweak the settings to tell Outlook / Thunderbird to remove the email from the server.  Note this will not work for IMAP.  An alternate solution is to set up a third party service (e.g. Gmail, or Google Apps) that we can forward all of your emails to, whilst removing them from the server. http://www.purpledogdesign.com/clients/knowledgebase/23/Using-Gmail.html for more info.  You may also notice that the sent or draft email folders can be optimised to save space. Clicking on the folder name will open a new window in the File Manger screen.  Here you can delete the individual emails / and or select all of the historical emails to delete (take a close look at the CUR (stands for current) folder - that's where you will find the individual files.



Warning
Please understand that we offer this advice to clients for self-management.  You accept full liability for your actions and you are free to choose how you would like to manage this situation.  You may wish to simply upgrade and retain your data.  However, should you choose to delete files, they will be immediately and irrevocably removed from the server. 

If you need further guidance, please do let us know.