In the last two weeks, I was reminded of something that is oh so very easy to overlook. Check your website disk space. Here’s what happened.
First, a client asked for help because the script we developed for her quit working. This is our normal reaction – me included. When a script fails. Something is wrong with the script! But after some quick research, it seems the script quit working because the web hosting account is full.
This is not true of all scripts. But if you have a system that adds data to your database on a regular basis e.g. blog posts, blog comments etc, you’ll fill up your database faster than you think. Especially when you get hit with some major traffic and people start commenting like crazy. Now admittedly it does take a lot of data to fill up even a smallish hosting plan. Depends on what is added to the database and your hosting plan. Yet, never say never. You
might just be popular overnight 😉
The other incident happened on my very own servers. I wasn’t getting emails like I normally do. One or two would slip by, but the volume of mail was just not normal. Turns out, due to a fluke, my account space was reduced by half and my hosting account had run out of space. Thankfully, my fabulous host righted that immediately and the emails started pouring in again… maybe this was one problem I shouldn’t
have fixed 😉
Important Tech Tip: When something happens out of the blue with your website, remember to check your disk space. It could be full.
