What are the best practices for managing disk usage on a game wiki hosting server?

Automate image compression using tools such as ImageOptim or TinyPNG. This will save space and bandwidth. Then configure your software to automatically archive old forum threads that have been inactive for a while and make them available in a read-only section or even zipped and compressed. Finally, clear out the logs.

To learn what’s hogging all that space, use a tool such as WinDirStat or Disk Usage. Then clean up your act.

Consider moving stale data to lower-cost cloud storage or the archive tier (make sure you can rehydrate when needed). And schedule a regular monthly purge. Monitor your image hosting. Users may have uploaded lossless images; convert to lossy where possible. Minimize and you’ll maximize.

Automatically optimize images using TinyPNG or ImageOptom and periodically delete unused images using a plugin. Store old forum posts and wiki revisions in the cloud by exporting them to AWS S3 or Google Cloud Storage and replacing them with links. Review your site’s content monthly to remove spam and duplicates. Archive old forum posts automatically. If you don’t have enough of these scheduled tasks, create a cron job that periodically deletes temporary files and log entries. Monitor disk space utilization with Netdata or Grafana to receive alerts before you run out of space.

1. Delete old media files using MediaWiki extensions such as DeleteBatch or Maintenance Scripts. Also consider using a tool like WikiMedia Archive Tool to archive forum threads.

2. To compress images further, try ImageOptim or TinyPNG (batch mode).

3. Scheduling a cron job or setting up rotating logs will ensure that the logs are cleaned out and backed up on a regular basis.

4. Move old forum discussions to an archived “Classic Threads” area.

5. Support image lazy loading.

But, if space is really at a premium, ask your host about upgrading to an SSD.

For starters, preserve all of the important data. Archiving old forum threads with tools such as Wget or Screaming Frog to less expensive storage formats like AWS Glacier. Run image compression tools like TinyPNG on your forum and wiki assets – my experience is it saves 50% or more in most cases. Monitor storage with a dashboard (I use Datadog) and identify trends that could cause issues down the road. Delete spam or duplicate threads frequently – I run a simple script that flags posts that are over 180 days old for my moderators to assess. Finally, keep the community informed through a cleanup thread posted every few months to encourage participation and ownership.