Okay people this is a follow up to the prop flush tutorial. You've done your prop flush and freed up lots of memory but some how you still have more space being used than the number of files you thought you were using. This is where proper ftp site maintenance comes into the picture. This tutorial is designed mostly to help you look for space wasting files on your account.

The first place to look is your home directory as soon as you log on to ftp. Normally you see the folders www, fshosting, and server. Some times in haste or by accident we place files there and forget to erase them. I've been known to do this myself some times you leave a pat file lying around or some extra gifs you forgot about while transferring files. Its best to erase these extra file from this area unless you are unsure about the file then you can message one of the server wizzes about it.

Moving futher into your site lets explore the fshosting folder. Once inside you notice several folders : backups,get_pat,logview, and updatepat are the ones you should be concerned with for this tutorial.

Backups: This is the backup that are created when you put in a new pat for your palace. After a while the backup pats can accumilate. This isn't a problem unless you have an extrememly big pat file. If your pat is only 100 killobites and you have say 50 of them thats less than 5 megs, but if your pat is over a meg in size and you have 50 of them thats a ton of space loss. This folder should contain some back ups but after a while you don't need a back up from February of 2000. Keeping an eye on this fold will help greatly in the conservation of space.

Get_Pat: When ever you make the copy of your pat file or prp file to download it goes here. After you have them downloaded there is no real reason to keep them there unless you don't want to download them and want to use it as a storage area. This again is size of file issue. If your pat and prp file are small its not a problem but if you have a 50 meg prop file plus another 50 meg propfile backup then that 100 megs you don't have.In the case of a huge back up prp file its best to do a prop flush and then hit the get prp button again in your webtools page. This way you have a current smaller version of your prp file in that folder.

Logview:This area can get really messy. Every time you clear your webview log, a text file is placed here of that log. Some logs can be huge and take up lots of space. If you don't delete them you can lose up to 30 megs of space depending on how big your txt files come out. This is an area negelected many times and can lead to unexplained space loss.

Update_pat: Sometimes pat files just end up being here that aren't used and take up space if you dont need it then erase it.

Those areas are the main space hogs in your fshosting folder and are the ones that are the most easily maintained. Once again if you are unsure about deleting something ask a server wiz, don't delete something that might end up causing problems for your palace.

Now lets look inside your server folder. Inside the server folder some times extra pats can end up there that you have no need for anymore. If you look at the date of the file you can decide if you need it or not. Going deeper into your server folder open the palace folder (everyone should be familiar with this as they have to do this in order to get to their media file.) Once in your palace folder you will see along with your media folder the folder marked psdata.

Note:DO NOT, and I repeat DO NOT' erase anything carelessly in this folder, it contain necessary files for your palace. Inside this folder you can see how big your pserver.prp file is and decide whether it is time to flush or not. Now what you can erase in this folder is very specific. Sometimes you have extra pat files in the folder but if you pay attention you will see some have names like pserver8.pat, or pservera.pat etc. Only the marked pserver.pat is the real pat file. Those that aren't spelled pserver.pat exactly are more than likely duplicates that are taking up space. Those can be erased but if you are unsure then once again ask a server wiz. One file is named pserver.pat.lck, that is one you cannot erase incase you go wandering and have not idea the purpose of that file. The extra pat files are the only files you should worry about in this folder all other files are necessary and shouldn't be tampered with unless you want to cause problems for your palace.

Now the reason I wrote this is because though it may be a pain to do this, if you don't then that is space you are losing that can be used for more rooms, scripts, sounds etc so the person that would be losing is you the owner. The server wizzes cannot do it because we don't know what you want or do not want to keep and therefore cannot make judgement calls like that. It is up to you the owner to make sure of things like this are in good shape. If you do this maintenance you will find that it doesn't require constant attention, and that you will regain a lot of space you thought you had lost.