Web Site Storage

Recently I was updating our chapter web site and discovered that we have already exceeded more than half of our alloted storage space (250MB of 400MB). While it isn't a critical problem for the immediate future, I can see where a few more seasons of photos and such might force us to start cleaning house a bit... i.e. removing material that we might otherwise want to keep.

Several options exist, but the one that made the most sense to us was to sign up for one of these free storage services (i.e. Google Docs). Google Docs allows each account holder to utilize 1GB of storage space free of charge. I believe you can sign up by simply having a gmail account, which we use as our general chapter e-mail. Having a gmail account and utilizing Google Docs not only provides us with additional storage, but our main chapter e-mail address isn't tied to any one individual, so we can use this when printing materials (i.e. business cards, fliers, etc.) and not have to worry about the information changing from year to year. The other nice thing is that several people can help keep an eye on the e-mail bucket and help respond in a more timely manner than one individual might be able to.

As for the types of data we store on Google Docs... I don't believe that it is like a PhotoBucket or Flickr site where you might put photos, rather it is used for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings or forms (someone correct me if I'm wrong). For example, we have an old slide show and a set of drawings that are somewhat large, so we host the files on Google Docs and just link them on our chapter web page. Actually, this is real similar to how videos can be handled... videos can be posted to You Tube and then a video link posted to the web site. That way, all the data is hosted elsewhere and a simple text link is all that is saved on the web site, which maximizes the storage space offered through WEBS.

I wouldn't recommend storing photos off site as they actually save and display relly well through WEBS (usually), but for videos and other files, remote storage will get the most mileage from the space that EAA and WEBS has provided.

Just wanted to offer some ideas for those who haven't considered these options.