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Amazon s3 Why should I use it?

by Ben_Doyle
5 replies
This is going to sound like a real dumb question but....

I'm in the middle of setting up my first membership site and I'm uploading all my videos and manuals etc to it.

I'm uploading them to the actual wordpress website itself people keep telling me I should use amazon s3 but they don't tell me why.

So, why should I use amazon s3 and not just upload all my content directly to the site itself?

Can someone explain it to me?

Thanks

Ben
#amazon
  • Profile picture of the author Shaun OReilly
    I took a quick look at the site in your signature and
    see that it is hosted by HostGator.

    I assume that you're on a shared hosting account.
    If so, your site will be competing for server resources
    with all the other HostGator customers who use the
    same shared server.

    Your video files will consume a lot of server resources
    especially if you have a lot of members accessing the
    content at the same time.

    The reason I use Amazon S3 is that it helps to take the
    load off of my own server and their servers are reliable,
    quick and pretty cheap too.

    Dedicated to mutual success,

    Shaun
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    • Profile picture of the author Ben_Doyle
      Originally Posted by Shaun OReilly View Post

      I took a quick look at the site in your signature and
      see that it is hosted by HostGator.

      I assume that you're on a shared hosting account.
      If so, your site will be competing for server resources
      with all the other HostGator customers who use that
      shared server.

      Your video files will consume a lot of server resources
      especially if you have a lot of members accessing the
      content at the same time.

      The reason I use Amazon S3 is that it helps to take the
      load off of my own server and their servers are reliable,
      quick and pretty cheap too.

      Dedicated to mutual success,

      Shaun
      So it basically boils down to speed and reliability?
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      • Profile picture of the author Shaun OReilly
        Originally Posted by Ben_Doyle View Post

        So it basically boils down to speed and reliability?
        Speed, reliability and more.

        If you continue to use shared hosting and too many of
        your members access the video content at the same
        time it can affect the performance of the rest of your
        site.

        Amazon S3 is super-cheap to use and takes the load
        off of my server so the rest of my site runs better too.

        I just think it's good practise to use Amazon S3 from
        the start because when the traffic ramps-up, the site
        is ready to ramp-up right away without any further
        interventions from me.

        Dedicated to mutual success,

        Shaun
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    Originally Posted by Ben_Doyle View Post

    So it basically boils down to speed and reliability?
    Yes. Speed and uptime (reliability).

    And they are two of the most important things when it comes to hosting files online.

    If you start to get a number of users downloading and/or watching those videos at the same time, your server resources will suffer greatly and performance will slow right down... even to the point where Hostgator could suspend your account if it becomes too much of burden on the server.

    A cloud hosting service such as Amazon S3 is now widely regarded the standard for hosting these types of files, especially videos. I highly recommend you make the change and start using Amazon S3 now. Your customers get faster performance and it costs you very little. There's really no reason why you shouldn't make the change.
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  • Profile picture of the author Des Lau
    Yep speed and reliability. The last thing you want are your customers complaining that your videos aren't playing and you have to go in and fix them all up.

    Amazons3 has the capability to run on the cloudfront servers, so your videos will be streamed from the cloudfront servers in proximity to your customers geolocation.
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