Watch out for website suspension for "ABUSING RESOURCES".?

A HEADS UP TO OTHERS WHO ARE AS CLUELESS AS MYSELF

Here's a note I got from Kyle and Carson that surprised me into doing some stupid things.

Hi Alexx,
We hope that you are having a great day. We have noticed that your website is using a large amount of storage space and we wanted to reach out to see if there is anything we can do to help you maintain a less "bloated" website footprint.
Ideally, your website should have media such as video, and large images hosted on specialized hosting services so that your site runs optimally, loads quickly, and offers your visitors the best user experience possible.

(I HAVE NO VIDEO, SO ESPECIALLY NEVER EXPECTED ANY OF THIS)

For example, rather than host video's directly on your website server that is optimized for serving website content, you could host the video on a service like youtube which specializes in serving fast streaming rates for video.
Hosting large files on your WordPress website here at WA is not optimal and could lead to slower site performance, a less than optimal experience for your visitors, and could lead to lower rankings and traffic.
You website storage usage is around 2.1 GB, take required action so your website will not be disabled for abusing resources.
So, today we wanted to reach out and offer to help optimize your storage space and see if we can minimize your website storage footprint to ensure the best possible performance for your site.
We suggest moving your large files to a dedicated service such as YouTube for video hosting, or Flickr for image hosting.
Let's discuss how we can work towards this and really optimize your site.
We look forward to hearing from you,
Kyle & Carson

Needless to say, I panicked! I do have a lot of photos on one site but I had a plug-in called WP SMUSH on it, which I apparently hadn't used well. So I went searching for plug-ins, found DNUI (Stands for DO NOT USE) which "cleans" your system of unused crap. It looks to me like for each image we store in the Media Library there are actually MULTIPLE versions stored in order to provide the option of multiple sizes to be used on our site.

So I watched this plug in "clean" like 6000 images (weird... no way I have that many, but again... these duplicates exist).

THEN when finished I started going through the site and finding TOTALLY MISSING PHOTOS. HOLY. CRAP. GREAT.

The DNUI program was supposed to clean only UNUSED pics. It did, along with many USED pics I clearly wanted to keep.. And of course it had warned me that sh*t could happen, but I felt I needed to do something fast. I don't respond well to unexpected catastrophe notices when I have all my eggs in this WA basket. (A SLIGHT PTSD issue, let's say... LOL)

So out of like 120 pages/posts I really don't have a good idea where to start. I guess anywhere is as good as anywhere else.

Meanwhile I've also opened a Flickr account and am figuring that out... but the workload of redoing so many pics on the site is mad aggravating.

I don't know what the best solution would be for anyone getting this notice in the future. I just know I won't run up against it again because I'm redoing EVERYTHING. It really spooked me, especially since I have 13 sites hosted here right now and for some reason I was under the impression that we had unlimited "service" generally. There are clearly BIG exceptions to that.

I've been absent from WA for a bit... a family death and dying and aftermath thing wherein I had to completely re-prioritize for a while. I did well to keep up with ANY websites, and the last thing I needed was a big ass problem with WA trying to get back in the saddle.

I sure hope this info helps somebody out to avoid a panic. Just don't jump onto a program that causes you more problems if you can avoid it. These plug-ins can be really glitchy.

Take care, all... and sorry I've been a bit scarce.

-Alexx