Data Usage

Being that I am nowhere near the level of a technical wizard, I have a question. You have access to 2 different chat forums. One has a membership of about 50 and is small in nature because of that. Not many sub-forums, not that many links to click on, etc....

The other has a membership of 500,000 or so. It's a VERY busy site because of the average number of users logged in at any given moment, loads of internal links, ads, it loads slower than the other site, a difference in the appearance of the site to members versus non members, etc.......Much more layered/complex if you will.

Do those two differences make a difference in how much internet data is being used on one site versus another?

I guess the same question could be used for web sites in general, but I thought I would use the chat forum example seeing how we're on one right now.

a reply to: DeepImpactX

The saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" works for data too.

A quieter text based site generates far less throughput than one with timed graphic adverts and lots of user submitted pictures.

But generally, professional sites will try and minimize data because it affects page load time, which affects readability, which affects clicks, which affects their bottom dollar.

The data throughput browsing a web forum, compared with browsing the likes of YouTube, is trivial anyway.

a reply to: DeepImpactX

To directly answer your question: the busy site uses leaps and bounds more bandwidth.

Thank you