Here are some suggestions for reducing disk usage in WordPress. Find and permanently delete all images that you’re not actually using. Your web designer is uploading large images and this inadvertently wastes a lot of disk space. It’s not uncommon to see some images that are ten times larger than necessary.
Optimize your uploaded images. Reduce the images to the largest you’ll actually need on the site. The following is a real world example and while these aren’t your files, I’m seeing the exact same pattern on most all WordPress sites. In the following example Sample_Image.jpg is the original uploaded file and it’s size is about 1.37 MB (1445108 bytes). It’s so big that it would have to be reduce to even fit on a high resolution computer monitor. If the file were reduced down to the actual size used on the site before uploading, it would likely use about one-tenth the disk space.
When you upload one file, WordPress creates multiple files of various sizes to accommodate computer screens, tablets and phones. If the file is huge, WordPress makes many more files to accommodate every possible resolutions. Here’s what happens to that one file above when it is uploaded to WordPress:
1445108 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image.jpg (the one original file) 18095 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-300x225.jpg 215832 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-1024x768.jpg 6335 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-150x150.jpg 117559 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-768x576.jpg 502786 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-1536x1152.jpg 26831 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-400x250.jpg 209761 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-1080x675.jpg 29734 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-400x284.jpg 51175 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-510x382.jpg 243007 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-1080x810.jpg 53322 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-400x516.jpg 345020 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-1280x960.jpg 197729 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-980x735.jpg 45398 Aug 26 2020 Sample_Image-480x360.jpg
I think you can see what’s happening. I have two suggestions. Media Cleaner can delete unused images for you: https://meowapps.com/plugin/media-cleaner/ . Here’s a plugin that can compress images that have already been uploaded: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/ . Before using this tool, delete unused files. Note that these are third party products and we cannot guarantee their functionality or provide tech support for them. However, I’ve had good luck with them.
Alternately, we can add more disk space to the account if you need it. Prices are here: https://christianwebhosting.com/pricingpackage-info/extra-resources/#DISKSPACE .