Over the past decade, home Internet connections have become substantially faster and many websites have found themselves delivering larger and larger files to visitors. The average website file size and amount downloaded by visitors have increased, but has your host ever raised its bandwidth and storage limits?

Most hosts have kept up with the times and raised their limits to stay in line with current Internet trends. There are still hosts out there offering 1999 features today in 2009– 20 MB of storage instead of 2 GB, or 500 MB of bandwidth instead of 50 GB.

Just as salaries and prices rise in response to inflation, so should web host features. Bandwidth and storage has become much cheaper over the years and requirements have increased. If your provider hasn’t passed the savings on to you and won’t keep up with the times, perhaps its time to jump ship and find a new one?

Continue reading: Has your host kept up with the times?

Lance Ulanoff at PC Magazine predicts that the “good old days” of free content and services is soon to come to an end. He cites many reasons for this theory. Among them are:

1. A glut of free content from largely undifferentiated sources
2. Premier providers struggling to maintain a steady flow of new content without the benefit of revenue
3. A beyond-hard economy beating back every idea, initiative, and dollar that might help float said content on the free Web
4. An uncooperative public that remains unwilling to pay for virtually anything online

A recent article from CNN reported that Rupert Murdoch’s large conglomerate News Corporation was suffering losses and would start charging for some services on sites such as the Wall Street Journal. In addition the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing in which they discussed the crisis facing print media.

The collapsed economy, Ulanoff says, has spelled out the doom of the “free web” where news, video, and hosting services are offered up for free. Web site services that offer hosting and storage for photos, videos, and pretty much anything else depend upon ad revenues that have been on a steady decline. Blogs, video, and news stories will be the minority, and the Internet will become more of a traditional marketplace, Ulanoff fears.

Source: PC Magazine
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: PCMag: The Free Web is about to Expire

From time to time, I’ll come across a web host offering unlimited space, no bandwidth caps, or both. These hosts claim that for a low monthly price, often under £10, you can use all the storage and data transfer you want. Other hosts might not be so audacious as to offer no limits, but instead give their customers space and bandwidth limits far above what any average website owner would ever need. So, how do these companies stay in business?

Continue reading: The Truth About "Unlimited" Web Hosting