Check your hosting storage usage: clean up and upgrade

Learning to check your hosting storage usage saves you from nasty surprises: when your disk space fills up, uploads can fail and email can stop working. The customer portal shows you exactly how much space your website and email use together. This guide explains how to view that, what usually takes up the most room, how to clean up safely and when an upgrade makes more sense than tidying up. All storage at LJPc hosting runs on fast NVMe SSD.

What your storage is made up of

Shared hosting comes with a fixed amount of storage: 5 GB, 20 GB or 50 GB, all on fast NVMe SSD. Every plan has the same features, so you only choose on space.

One thing to keep in mind: your website and your email share that space. A full mailbox counts just as heavily as a large folder of photos on your site. That is why the portal splits your usage into Website and Email, so you can see at a glance which side takes the most room.

How to check your hosting storage usage in the customer portal

You can check your usage in a few steps in the customer portal:

1. Log in to the customer portal with your email address and password.
2. Open Hosting and domain names under the Services menu and go to the Sites tab.
3. Click the site you want to inspect.
4. In the Site overview block, look at the Disk space line. It shows how much you use of your total, with a percentage and a coloured bar.
5. Read the breakdown below the bar under Website and Email, so you know which part is using the space.

The bar stays green while there is room to spare, turns amber when your plan is nearly full and red once you reach your limit. The figures refresh roughly once an hour, so after a big clean-up you will see the result a little later.

Have several sites? The list under Sites also has a Storage column, handy for comparing your sites at a glance.

What takes up the most space

When your disk fills up, these are usually the culprits. The split between Website and Email already tells you whether to look in your files or your mailboxes.

Media files and uploads

The uploads folder is often the largest. WordPress keeps several sizes of every image, and old or unused media simply stays behind. Backup archives that a plugin leaves on the server can add up quickly too.

The database

Every time you save a page or post, WordPress stores an older version, known as a revision. Over time these pile up. Spam comments and temporary data (transients) also let your database grow quietly.

Log files

Files such as error_log and debug.log record errors and can grow large without you noticing, especially when something goes wrong on your site or in a plugin.

Email

Your mailboxes count towards the same limit. Large attachments and full folders such as Sent, Trash and Spam take up more space than you would expect.

How to free up space safely

Before you delete anything, first make a fresh backup of your website. That way you can always go back if you accidentally remove too much.

Clearing out old WordPress revisions

To limit the number of revisions, add a line such as define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 5); to wp-config.php, above the line "That's all, stop editing! Happy publishing.". WordPress then keeps only the last five versions per page.

Remove existing revisions with a trusted clean-up plugin, or carefully in phpMyAdmin. If you work in the database, make that backup first, because revisions live in your database and not among your files.

Deleting log files

Turn WP_DEBUG off on a live site, so no large debug.log keeps building up. Delete existing log files such as error_log through File Manager in Plesk or over an FTP or SFTP connection.

Unused images and media

Clear out media you no longer use through the WordPress Media Library. Also delete old backup archives that plugins have left behind, after downloading them first. Compress large images before you upload them; a lighter site also helps you speed up your website straight away.

Tidying up mailboxes

Empty the Trash and Spam folders, and delete old messages with large attachments. If you do not want to lose anything, collect your mail with an email program over IMAP and archive it locally.

For files, work in File Manager in Plesk, which you open with the Log in to Plesk button in the portal, or over FTP or SFTP. For your database, use phpMyAdmin.

When an upgrade beats cleaning up

Cleaning up helps, but sometimes more space is simply the sensible choice. Consider an upgrade if you are still close to your limit after tidying up, or if you expect growth, for example from a growing web shop or a lot of new media.

A larger plan only adds storage: the features are exactly the same at 5, 20 and 50 GB. You can easily change your hosting package to 20 GB or 50 GB. If you need more than 50 GB, get in touch with support and we will look at reseller hosting or a dedicated server together.

Still stuck, or not sure whether you need an upgrade? Feel free to contact support and we will take a look with you.