How to Free Up Disk Space and Reduce Inode Usage in WordPress (2024 Guide)
Is your WordPress site running low on disk space or inodes? This can lead to all sorts of problems – slow performance, errors, inability to update content, and even your site going offline entirely.
But don‘t panic! With a few optimization tweaks and clean-up tasks, you can reclaim precious disk space and inodes to keep your WordPress site running smoothly.
In this guide, we‘ll explain what disk space and inodes are, how to check your current usage levels, and provide 10 actionable tips to free up space and reduce inode consumption on your WordPress site. Let‘s dive in!
Understanding Disk Space and Inodes
When you sign up for a WordPress hosting plan, your web host allocates a certain amount of storage space on its servers to house your website‘s files. This storage allocation is your "disk space".
Disk space is measured in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). Entry-level plans typically come with around 10GB of storage, while higher-tier plans can offer 50GB or more.
Every time you upload an image, install a plugin, or draft a new post, it consumes some of your allotted disk space. The more files you have, and the larger those files are, the more disk space your WordPress site will occupy.
Alongside disk space, you also have an "inode" allowance. An inode is a data structure that stores metadata about each file, such as its size, ownership, and permissions.
Every file and folder on your WordPress site consumes one inode. So even a small file takes up an inode. Most WordPress hosting plans come with a generous number of inodes (often 250,000+). But if you have a large number of files, you can hit your inode limit even if you haven‘t used up all your disk space.
If you exceed your hosting plan‘s disk space or inode limit, you‘ll encounter issues like:
- An inability to upload new media files
- Emails failing to send or be received
- Errors when trying to update plugins, themes and WordPress core
- Your wp-admin dashboard becoming inaccessible
- Your entire site going offline
Scary stuff! So it‘s important to keep an eye on your disk and inode usage and take proactive steps to keep things under control. Here‘s how:
How to Check Disk Space and Inode Usage
Most WordPress hosting providers make it easy to see how much storage you‘re using. Typically you can view this information in your hosting control panel.
For example, in cPanel, look in the Statistics section on the right-hand side. Here you‘ll see a Disk Usage box that shows how many MB of space you‘ve consumed.
You can also check disk usage within WordPress itself. Install a plugin like WP-DBManager and go to Database > Disk Usage. This will show you a breakdown of how much disk space your WordPress core files, plugins, themes, and uploads are taking up.
To check your inode usage, log in to cPanel and scroll down to the Files section. Click the Disk Usage tool and toggle to Inodes view. This will display how many inodes you‘re currently using and how many are available.
Now that you know how to check your disk and inode consumption, here are 10 ways to reduce usage and free up space on your WordPress site:
- Optimize Your Images
Images are usually the biggest culprits when it comes to excessive disk space usage. Raw image files straight from your camera can be several MB each. And if you‘re not careful, uploading multiple large images to every page and post can quickly eat up your storage.
The solution is to optimize your images before uploading them to WordPress. Here are a few ways to do that:
Resize images to the actual dimensions you need. Don‘t upload a 3000-pixel wide image if it will only ever display at 700 pixels wide on your site. Use an image editing tool to reduce the dimensions.
Compress images to reduce the file size without significantly impacting quality. Tools like TinyPNG or Imagify can dramatically reduce file sizes by 60-80%.
Use next-gen image formats like WebP that offer superior compression compared to JPEG and PNG. The WebP Express plugin can automatically serve WebP versions of images to supported browsers.
Lazy load images so they only download when a user scrolls down to them. This doesn‘t directly impact disk space but can speed up page load times. Plugins like a3 Lazy Load can handle this for you.
By shrinking image file sizes before uploading them to WordPress, you‘ll consume far less disk space per image.
- Disable Unused Image Sizes
By default, WordPress generates multiple sizes of every image you upload, including thumbnail, medium, and large versions. This allows you to serve appropriately sized images in different contexts.
However, if you‘re not actually using all these image sizes, they‘re just taking up unnecessary space. You may be able to free up significant disk space by disabling the sizes you don‘t need.
To do this, install the plugin Disable Unused Image Sizes. Then go to Settings > Disable Image Sizes and uncheck the sizes you don‘t want WordPress to generate.
Going forward, this will reduce the number of files created for each new image you upload. To remove existing unused image sizes, use the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin to delete the old files.
- Delete Unused Themes and Plugins
Every plugin and theme you install adds files that consume disk space and inodes. Over time, as you try out different plugins and change your theme, you can accumulate many unused plugins and themes on your WordPress site.
To free up space, delete plugins and themes you no longer need:
- Go to Plugins > Installed Plugins and delete any inactive plugins
- Go to Appearance > Themes and delete any themes you‘re not currently using (except for a default theme like Twenty Twenty)
Remember, you can always reinstall plugins and themes if you need them again later. There‘s no need to keep them hanging around.
- Remove Unused Media Files
Take a look in your Media Library. Are there image, audio or video files that you‘ve uploaded but are no longer using in any pages or posts? Perhaps there are earlier revisions of files that have since been replaced with newer versions?
You can delete these unused media files to regain storage space. To easily identify files that aren‘t currently embedded anywhere on your site, use the Media Cleaner plugin.
Media Cleaner scans your WordPress database and shows you which media files are "unattached" and can be safely deleted. You can remove the files via the plugin rather than deleting them manually.
- Clean Up Your WordPress Database
Your WordPress database contains all your posts, pages, comments, users and settings. Over time, this database can become bloated, especially if you have a large site with many posts or products.
Optimizing your database involves removing unnecessary data and streamlining table structures. This can reclaim disk space and improve site performance.
Some common database optimizations include:
- Deleting orphaned metadata and old revision data (WP-Optimize can handle this)
- Cleaning up transient options and expired transients (use the free Transients Manager plugin)
- Removing old spam comments and unapproved comments (Akismet does a good job automatically deleting spam)
Periodically optimizing your database is a healthy practice and can have a sizeable impact on disk space if done regularly.
- Clear Caches and Logs
Many WordPress performance plugins generate static files to cache your pages and posts. This improves load times for visitors but can consume a lot of storage space, as caching often creates many copies of the same data.
Aim to clear your cache files regularly to free up space. If you‘re using a caching plugin like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache, it should have an option to purge the cache manually.
Some plugins, like WP Super Cache, also have an option to automatically clear the cache after a certain period. Turn this on and set a frequent enough interval (like every day or week) to prevent the cache from getting too large.
Also clear any log files that plugins create, such as error logs, access logs and security logs. These files continuously grow in size and are usually not necessary long-term. Delete the log files via your caching plugin or SFTP.
- Offload Media to Cloud Storage
If your WordPress site is particularly media-heavy, with many large images, audio or video files, you might consider offloading your media library to cloud storage to save disk space on your server.
Services like Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces and Google Cloud Storage give you a massive amount of external storage to house your media files. You can then serve up these files on your WordPress site via a CDN.
The WP Offload Media plugin makes this process easy by automatically copying media files to the cloud storage provider of your choice and rewrites URLs to serve the files from there.
This approach can save disk space while also improving loading times and relieving pressure on your web server. Just be mindful of the storage costs and CDN bandwidth fees from your cloud provider.
- Delete Inactive Email Accounts
If your WordPress hosting plan includes email hosting, you might have a number of email accounts set up for your domain. Over time, some of these accounts may become inactive as employees or customers come and go.
Inactive email accounts continue to take up space, as copies of incoming and outgoing emails are stored on the server. To reclaim this space, delete email accounts you no longer need.
In cPanel, go to the Email section and click Email Accounts. Here you can view your active accounts and how much disk space each one is using. Delete accounts belonging to people who are no longer involved with your website or business.
Don‘t forget to also check forwarders and autoresponders to ensure there aren‘t old email rules still running in the background.
- Upgrade Your Hosting Plan
If you‘ve followed the steps above and are still butting up against your disk space or inode limit, it might be time to upgrade to a higher-tier hosting plan.
Choosing a plan with more generous storage allowances gives your WordPress site room to grow. If you anticipate adding a lot more content, products or features in the near future, opting for a bigger plan now can save you the hassle of running out of space later.
Some of the smallest hosting plans, especially on shared servers, start with 5-10GB of storage. For a modest increase in monthly cost, you can jump up to plans offering 25GB+ of disk space and many more inodes.
Compare hosting plans from providers like WP Engine, Kinsta, SiteGround, Bluehost and Flywheel to find the right mix of resources and price for your growing requirements.
- Monitor Usage and Clean Up Regularly
Keeping disk space and inodes under control is not a one-time job. To avoid issues with running out of storage, you should monitor your usage and optimize your WordPress site on an ongoing basis.
Schedule a regular clean-up where you action the tips above – compress new images you‘ve added, delete plugins and themes you‘re no longer using, clear caches, and so on. Staying on top of your storage usage prevents you from suddenly hitting your limits.
It‘s also a good idea to keep an eye on your MySQL database size. As your site grows and collects more data, the database will slowly expand. If left unchecked, this can lead to storage issues down the line.
To monitor database size and growth over time, a plugin like Advanced Database Size is handy. It adds a size column to your list of WordPress database tables so you can easily see which tables are hogging space.
Benefits of Reducing Disk Space and Inode Usage
By implementing the strategies above to reduce disk space and inode consumption, you‘ll gain a number of important benefits:
- Improved website speed and performance. With less data to load and fewer files to scan, your WordPress site can run faster and more efficiently.
- Fewer errors and issues. Hitting your storage limits can cause all sorts of problems, from failed updates to email sending issues to complete site downtime. By staying within your allowances, your site will be more stable and reliable.
- Easier site migration. Should you choose to move your WordPress site to a new host in the future, having a smaller footprint will make the migration process quicker and simpler.
- Postpone upgrade costs. Freeing up disk space and inodes can delay the need to upgrade to a higher-priced hosting plan, saving you money.
- Enhanced security. An organized WordPress environment, with no extraneous plugins, themes or user accounts, presents a smaller attack surface for potential hackers.
The time you invest in optimizing your WordPress site‘s disk usage and inode consumption will pay dividends in smoother operation, happier visitors, and lower costs.
Wrapping Up
Even if your WordPress site is currently running fine, it‘s worth keeping an eye on your disk space and inode usage. A little proactive maintenance can prevent major headaches down the road.
By following the tips above – optimizing media files, cleaning up old data, leveraging cloud storage, and upgrading hosting plans strategically – you can keep your site lean, fast and healthy for the long haul.
Don‘t let disk space and inode limits hold back your WordPress site‘s growth and success!
