November 13, 20196 yr I'm pretty new to the website creating world. I've studied the very basics a long time ago but now I'm back at it and want to create a website that maybe some of you will have use of. But first of all I want to check if it's even possible... I'm a photographer and videographer mainly. So I want to create a site which the main goal is to share files for others to download. This will be my own videos, music, photos etc. Like a stock footage site. This will eventually result in many terabytes of storage. So my main concern is will I be able to share this many files? I know it's possible of course but how much work and money do I need to spend? I have another comuputer I can use as a server(?) if it's needed.
November 13, 20196 yr If's it's going to be terabytes of storage you need to consider cloud storage. For example: https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ You then need to look at a dedicated server to host the actual site to ensure you can manage the visitor numbers, costs vary. I pay £1300/year for mine. But... These costs will be dwarfed by your marketing costs. Nobody will know you exist which means nobody is going to see your images and other media. To make people aware of what you have you will need to spend cash. Which brings us back to the question: why are you doing this? Is it to make money or is it just a hobby site? If it the latter, start small. Set up a simple portfolio site on a shared server and see what happens.
November 13, 20196 yr While cloud storage providers seem cheap on the surface, you also have to account for cost of uploading and downloading data. Data transfer can be a lot more expensive than the storage itself because it's more unpredictable. If you or your users are regularly downloading and uploading files then you will see a spike in costs. This is one reason why I tend to use B2 for storage over Amazon S3 for personal files. There are other options to reduce costs, though, like implementing a CDN, but you add complexity every step. Considering it's a hobby project I would be looking for somewhere that allows you to store large amounts of media with little cost, ideally no transfer cost and with an API for data access. For example, Google Photos lets you upload unlimited photos and videos and has an API that can be used to display the content on your own site. There are pros and cons, but anything hobby you ideally want to go with the simplest option first and scale from there if needed.
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