The following information is to help members understand what "bandwidth" is and its importance regarding your Homestead Web site.

Bandwidth and Homestead:

Technically, bandwidth is defined as "amount of data transferred" per "unit of time" and is a significant cost in providing the Homestead service. Homestead monitors its users for bandwidth on a monthly cycle.

Each user has a different monthly bandwidth reset day. For most users, this day is the day of the month on which the account was originally created. To accommodate all the months, Homestead will adjust the reset date for accounts created on the 29th or later of a month, e.g. if created on the 31st, the reset day is the 28th.

How much Bandwidth?

The Homestead basic package comes with a specific amount of bandwidth per month. If web sites in a Homestead account require more bandwidth and experience high web traffic and/or offer downloads, members should read the bandwidth conservation tips (below) and consider adding bandwidth upgrades.

Homestead Bandwidth Meter:

The Bandwidth Meter is account-based, which means if a user has multiple Homestead Web sites, the bandwidth usage for all sites is totaled and displayed on the meter. This is why members with multiple sites will see the same bandwidth usage on each site's "Site Properties" page. To learn how to find the Bandwidth Meter, click here.

Calculating your Homestead Bandwidth Usage:

Calculating bandwidth is much more difficult than calculating storage space. When calculating bandwidth per page view for a single page, you must consider the total number of graphics, text and their collective size.

While page and file size times number of pageviews and downloads is a widely known component of bandwidth usage, there are other factors when considering your Homestead service.

Here are the major factors that are totaled and displayed in the Homestead Bandwidth Meter.

• Page Views/File Downloads
  • viewing web pages (both imported HTML and SiteBuilder-created)
  • viewing/downloading imported files, e.g. images, mp3's, background sounds, word documents, etc. (both from within Homestead pages and linked from outside sources)
  • viewing any Homestead-related pages associated with your Homestead Web Site, e.g. "Page Not Found" message resulting from outdated or incorrect URLs to a member's Homestead Web site
• Editing
  • editing pages using the online SiteBuilder
  • downloading pages and files to edit in the offline SiteBuilder
    • downloading pages and files stored in the user's Homestead directory count as bandwidth usage.
    • Homestead elements are not stored in the user's Homestead directory and do not count as bandwidth usage.

Exceeding Your Homestead Bandwidth Allotment

When a Homestead account exceeds the alloted bandwidth, the following occurs:

• web sites in the account are not viewable (a page explaining the situation appears instead)
• member cannot view or edit web sites in the SiteBuilder
• member can access and manage their account, pages, and files.
• members with the offline SiteBuilder can work offline only and edit any previously downloaded pages, however pages cannot be published or downloaded.

  Note:

  • Members can access their account to upgrade to Homestead subscription services or purchase additional bandwidth to meet their web site requirements.

Bandwidth Conservation Tips

The following tips can help members to reduce their bandwidth usage:

do not's
• do not use many or many imported sounds or audio.
• do not publicly post large, popular downloads (like mp3's).

do's
• do use Homestead elements (e.g clipart, background sounds, etc) because they do not count against a user's bandwidth usage.
• do reduce the size of imported images (both the dimensions, and resolution) before importing them to use on their Homestead web site.
• do "optimize" web images
• do use thumbnails rather than full size pictures.
• do reuse your imported images
• do use the offline SiteBuilder when editing and previewing.
• do be aware of others possibly linking to your pages and files.
• do use Homestead Password Protection to manage traffic on specific web pages.

Related Links:

• "What is Bandwidth" from HostHelp.com, click here
• Additional info about Bandwidth from HostChart.com, click here
• "StyleGuide for Bandwidth" from SpiderPro.com, click here