If your website is hosted on a regular web hosting service, you already know that over time, your site gradually slows down.
As your website traffic increases, your hosting costs pile up, and you’ll have to pay for the additional services to backup and secure your valuable site data. You will have an additional cost for caching and optimizing images.
However, large images and media files can still drastically reduce your site's performance, not to mention the increasing expense on your site.
Cloud storage services such as Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or DigitalOcean offer you the opportunity to get all the mentioned benefits above
One way to avoid this extra expense while still getting a faster website is to use reliable cloud storage to serve media files.
Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and DigitalOceans are few of the reliable storage you can use to help you get a better website without wasting any money.
In this guide, I have discussed why you should use Cloud storage, what are the best Cloud services, and how to offload your site data to the Cloud and serve them to your site.
Here is the list of the topics covered in this article:
- Why you should use Cloud Storage services
- Best Cloud storage services (Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and DigitalOcean Spaces)
- Media Storage To Cloud plugin and its features
- How to connect your WordPress site with Cloud services with WP Media Storage to Cloud plugin
Keep on reading to learn more.
Why You Should Use Cloud Storage Services
Here are some of the reasons why should you use Cloud storage services:
1. Saves You Money By Reducing Hosting Cost
Right now, many people use Cloud storage to store media files, especially growing business sites such as photography, e-commerce, etc that regularly upload images to their websites.
This is because Cloud storages are more convenient in terms of cost.
Most Cloud services offer you pay-as-you-go packages, which can help you reduce your overall hosting costs as they only bill you for the spaces you use.
When you are using shared hosting services, you will have to pay a fixed amount of money on a monthly or yearly basis.
And nevertheless, you will have to pay the full amount of money even if you are using only a minimal portion of your hosting spaces.
Again, if there's a time when you require more space than what is included in the package, you have to upgrade to the next package which is quite expensive.
In the long run, Cloud storage could be really profitable for you.
According to a study, it shows that you can reduce your server costing by 37% over a three-year time period.
Moreover, the Cloud storage providers will store your site, maintain, and backup your files without any additional fees, and also they will provide you a security system to protect your data.
As a result, you won’t even have to spend money for security or backup purposes.
2. Backup Your Site Data Which Secures Your Business
If you use Cloud storage, you won’t have to be worried about your site backup or data safety.
Cloud services offload your site data and copy it to multiple locations, and syncs your data as you make any changes.
As a result, even if you accidentally delete files, or if one of the server crashes, your data will still be safe, because it is stored in other locations.
Also, Cloud services make copies of your data off-site, which will prevent your site data from losing through any local natural disaster, thievery, or malfunction.
So you are always in business.
3. Improve Your Site Performance By Serving Large Media Through Cloud
Cloud storage can greatly improve your site performance by serving large images from the Cloud to your site.
It will speed up your webpage loading speed which results in better rank in the SERP pages, low bounce rate, and improve user experience.
The key idea is that it will only load the structure from the origin server.
All the other static content such as media files/ images will be highly optimized and they will be loaded from a separate Cloud server simultaneously.
As a result, your site will be faster and the user experience will definitely improve.
Best Cloud Storages To Offload And Serve Your WordPress Media Files
There are many cloud storage services available, but let us look at the best cloud storage that we recommend for your WordPress site.
1. Amazon S3 (AWS)
Amazon S3 is a cloud storage service that is designed for online backup service, that offers you a scalable, high-speed web-based service with low-cost.
Also, It will give you full control over the accessibility of data.
Amazon provides over 165 services to individuals, businesses, and governments, and it owns over 34% of all the Cloud service and is valued at more than $500 billion.
2. Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud Storage is one of the biggest cloud storage providers in the world. It offers you a massive network of optimized computers, through which you can store data on the Cloud server and retrieve data.
Google Cloud has more than 90 products under the Google Cloud brand, and now it is valued at around $225 billion.
3. DigitalOcean Spaces
DigitalOcean Spaces is a simple cloud service provider that offers you virtual Linux servers, called “droplets”.
It has data centers all around the world and it is known as one of the fastest Cloud service providers.
DigitalOceans' main competitors are Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Service.
Recently, DigitalOcean announced that it raised $50 million more from prior investors, which values the company at $1.15 billion.
How To Offload Media Files From WordPress To Cloud storage?
You can offload your site media files through Cloud console, but if you are not a tech guy, it would be a bit difficult to do so.
So, if you don't want to take the hassle, the best way to do so is by using a reliable plugin that will let you handle this matter easily.
One such plugin is called WP Media Storage to Cloud.
WP Media Storage To cloud
WP Media Storage to Cloud plugin lets you easily offload your WordPress files to your preferred Cloud Storage such as Amazon S3, Google Cloud Service, DigitalOcean.
Also, you can serve the files to your site directly from your cloud storage.
How To Offload WordPress Media Files To Cloud (Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, And DigitalOcean)
To connect your WordPress site with Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or DigitalOcean Spaces, you will need the following credentials:
For Amazon S3:
- Amazon S3 Access Key
- Secret Access Key
- S3 Bucket Name
- Bucket Region
You will need to create an IAM user account and an S3 bucket to get these credentials.
For Google Cloud Storage:
- GCS Service Account Key JSON Data
- Google Cloud Storage bucket name
Follow this Google Cloud Platform link to create a service account and Cloud storage bucket to get the required credentials.
For DigitalOcean:
- Space Access Key
- Space Access Secret
- Space Name
- Space Region
Visit this link to sign up for DigitalOcean to get the required credentials.
Once you have the required credentials, follow the simple steps to connect your WordPress site with your preferred cloud storage:
Step 1: Select Storage
Once you Install the WP Media Storage to Cloud plugin, you will find a Wp Cloud option in the WordPress dashboard.
Click on the Wp Cloud option from the dashboard.
On the plugin homepage, Amazon S3 will be selected by default, and you can switch to Google Cloud storage or DigitalOcean by click on the service logo from the upper tab.
When you click on a logo, a relevant connectivity form will appear.
Select your preferred service and fill-up the form with relevant information and click on the Save button.
If all the information you have provided is correct, then you will get a success message, and your site will be connected with the Cloud storage.
Once your WordPress site is connected with the Cloud storage, the next step is to offload your WordPress media files to the bucket.
Step 2: Offload
To offload your WordPress media files to the S3 bucket, click on the Sync option from the WP Media Storage to Cloud dashboard.
Select your preferred Cloud storage logo from the top.
To offload all the site media files to the Cloud, select Send all data to storage option from the Select sync option dropdown menu which will offload all the media files to the Cloud.
Send unsynced data to storage option will offload only the unsynced media files to the Cloud.
For now, select the first option "Send all data to storage" from the dropdown.
Click on the Sync button.
And it will start syncing your WordPress media files to the Cloud storage.
Remember that it may take some time to offload all the media files to the Cloud, and in the meantime do not change tab, it may hamper syncing.
If the syncing is successful, a success message will appear.
This means your WordPress media files are now offloaded to the Cloud, and they are now ready to serve.
How To Serve WordPress Media Files Directly From Cloud Server
Once your WordPress media files are offloaded to the Cloud, now you can serve the media files to your site from the Cloud.
Now, click on the Settings tab from the WP Media Storage to Cloud plugin home.
Select the service you want to use (if you are using multiple services).
In here, you’ll find the following three options:
Serve Media File From Bucket
Enabling this option will serve the media files on your website directly from the selected Cloud storage.
Upload Media Files On Bucket When Uploaded On Media Library
Enabling this option will upload the new files to the Cloud immediately once you upload them to your site.
Delete Media From Bucket When Deleted From The Media Library
Enabling this option will delete the synced file from the Cloud once you delete the file from your website media library.
Enable the options according to your preference and click on the Save button to save the changes.
Author's Note/Conclusion
So, if you want to save time and skip the hassle of doing this with Cloud console, you can use WP Media Storage to Cloud plugin.
Also, you can check this doc to get a WP Media Storage to Cloud plugin dashboard overview.