The short, simple reason for this shut down is: You probably have too many
Exceeding Your Data Transfer Rate
What Is Data Transfer/Bandwidth?
You go to your site and see the dreaded message:
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Please read on before you even consider signing up for extra data transfer.
The short, simple reason for this shut down is: You probably have too many
Exceeding Data Transfer has very little to do with how little space you are taking up on your site. For example, suppose you have the following files on your site:
The total space taken up on your site is 1.218MB. Consider the following scenarios which (a) assume a limit of 3GB/month (4.16MB/hr) data transfer, and (b) your visitors arrive within a one hour time span.
During that one hour, Scenario #2 will cause your site to shut down whereas the scenario #1 won't.
You can correct, or attempt to correct, the excessive data transfer associated with your page(s) by one or all of the following:
PAGE BUILDER USERS! - It is important that you read and understand the need to re-size your graphics before using them on your pages.
The hourly data transfer rate, if not given, and if it it applies, is approximately:
(Monthly Data Transfer Rate In GB)/0.744 = Data Transfer in KB (744 hrs/month)
For example, if the monthly rate is 3GB then the hourly rate, in KB, is 3/.744 = 4.03KB.
WHAT IS DATA TRANSFER/BANDWIDTH
Data Transfer (Bandwidth) is the measure of bytes that are transferred from your site to the user's PC, i.e bandwidth. If someone comes to a page on your site, that page (html and graphic files) is transferred to them and the size of the files being transferred is measured. The total bytes of such transfers, both html and graphics files, is your bandwidth usage. Bytes are normally measured in kilobytes, or 210 = 1,024 = 1K bytes or 1KB.
As an example, a one megabyte (1MB = 1,000KB) file that is viewed 2,000 times will result in a bandwidth of 2,000MB or 2GB (1GB = 1,000MB). In reality, however, most web pages are around two to five kilobytes (2-5kb) and graphics may be from 50-100KB. Thus, someone viewing an average web site that transfers 500KB to the visitor's PC, would consume about 500K of bandwidth. Therefore, if your bandwidth is limited to 3GB, it would be totally consumed if 600,000 people a month (20,000/day) view that page! There are not that many personal sites on GeoCities that have that much traffic. But if you have lots of graphics, say of 200KB in size then you could easily run up your bandwidth quite fast. The key here is to keep your graphics as small as possible and don't load large music files.
GeoCities recently notified some, if not all, of their members that they would be imposing a data transfer limit on free site. The limit is 3GB per month. If this limit is reached, GeoCities will make those sites unavailable to the web for one hour. Please see GEO'S DATA TRANSFER POLICY.
Unfortunately, GeoCities has failed to list what the hourly/daily/weekly data transfer rates are so it is virtually impossible to gauge when your site may be temporarily shut down for exceeding these rates. You can, however, assume that the rate for a day is the monthly rate divided by 30, i.e 100MB, and the hourly rate is 100MB/24, i.e. approximately 4.2MB. If this is the actual hourly rate and it is exceeded then your site will be shut down for one hour.
Here are some example of when your site would be shut down based upon the assumed hourly data transfer rate of 4.2MB:
| CAUSE OF SITE SHUT DOWN | |
| Number Of Files Accessed | Size Of Each File |
| 4 | 1.04 MB |
| 8 | 521 KB |
| 12 | 347 KB |
| 21 | 200 KB |
| 42 | 100 KB |
| 83 | 50 KB |
You can easily see from the above that if the hourly rate is 4.2MB and you have several pages with 200KB graphics on them, your site could be shut down if 4-5 pages are hit and each has 4-5 such graphics on them.
If a member wishes to avoid this shutdown they could
The hourly data transfer rate for each of the five account are:
| ESTIMATED HOURLY DATA TRANSFER RATES BASED ON 31 DAYS & 24 HRS/DAY | |||||||
| Free Account | GeoPlus | PRO | Business Starter |
Business Standard |
Business Professional |
1planhost* My Host |
|
| Hourly Rate |
4.2MB | 6.7MB | 13.4MB | 33.6MB | 100.8MB | 268.8MB | 53.8MB |
| Monthly Rate |
3GB | 5GB | 10GB | 25GB | 75GB | 200GB | 40GB |
| Cost | FREE | $4.95/m $49.50/year |
$8.95 $107.40/year |
$11.95/m $143.40/year |
$19.95/m $239.40/year |
$39.95/m $479.40/year |
$8.25/m $99/year |
If you pay $4.95/month you will only gain about 64% in the amount of data transfer and the PRO premium account will only give your about a 300% increase. If you are having this much data transfer you might consider another host that has unlimited data transfer or a host with more than 40GB/month. Please go to hostsearch.com to find hosts that offer more data transfer than GeoCities.
NOTE: I DO NOT RECOMMEND USING ANY GEOCITIES PREMIUM SERVICE as they lack features commonly found with other hosts and the fact that GeoCities is widely know for its lack of help. You can compare GeoCities' Premium services to two others services at COMPARISON.
You will note that the extra data transfer, 2MB up to 32MB, depends upon the plan selected. The account will cost $4.95 to $39.95 per month and will only allow you up to 10 times as much data transfer as you have with your free site. In my opinion this cost is excessive and grossly inadequate.
You should be aware that for the money noted above, $59.40 to $479.40 per year, you can have:
Read more about this at DOMAIN NAME & HOST INFORMATION.
For a comprehensive list of web hosts, see HOSTSEARCH.COM, where you can find a host to meet your needs as to (a) space (b) data transfer and (c) cost.
So, the question is, "Why in the world would you or anyone want to sign up for GeoCities's Premium Services?"