Basics About Bandwidth
If, like me, you are new to Steemit, sooner or later, you will come across bandwidth, usually at the point, you're unable to post, comment, or, in fact, do anything much at all, except browse.
The first you'll, probably, be aware of it, will be when you try to do something and a message pops up, saying: 'Bandwidth limit exceeded. Please wait to transact, or power up'. This can be really frustrating, but I have a few tips that can help to alleviate the problem.
So What is Bandwidth?
Simply put, bandwidth is what determines how much information you can upload at any given time. There are plenty of articles on here, that go into the complexities of this, but, for now, I'll keep the information simple.
New Steemians have a somewhat limited bandwidth, (from what I understand, it increases over time, as you gain rewards), so it's important to keep an eye on it. I advise, as I did in 'Rookie Mistakes', to read @davemccoy post https://steemit.com/quicktip/@davemccoy/quick-tip-voting-power-and-how-to-check-it
This informative article, will teach you how to check both your bandwidth and your voting power, amongst other things.
How Can I Use My Bandwidth More Efficiently?
Once again, I can't reiterate enough: Steemit is not Facebook!!' On Facebook, we can interact as many times as we like, regardless of the amount of content in each comment, post or 'like'.
(Image source: tribune.com.pk)
Steemit works in a completely different way. Our bandwidth is depleted with every interaction, regardless of size. This means that the more times we upvote, comment, edit, post or even redeem rewards, the more of our bandwidth we use.
This needn't be a huge problem, however, as there are a few things we can do to avoid depleting our bandwidth unnecessarily. There are a few useful ways to get the most out of your 'Steeming'.
(Image source: smarta.com)
1. Minimal Editing.Editing your posts/comments after you have published, will dramatically eat into your bandwidth, in fact, this is probably the worst culprit. You can easily avoid doing this, by thoroughly proof reading before you press that 'post' button.
2. Quality Not Quantity. High quality posts, enriched with well-written content and images are they key. Of course, many of us, myself included, love to post memes, jokes or quick links to other source materials, and this is perfectly fine, just remember to include plenty of good quality content in your blog, alongside the shorter, more simple, fun posts.
3. Put Thought Into Your Comments. After all, well written comments, demonstrating an understanding of the author's content, are more likely to earn you curation rewards, so why waste the bandwidth with a simple "nice post".
(Image source: clip-art.com)
4. Avoid Resteeming Too Many Posts. It's another one of those Facebook habits we need to avoid falling into. We're used to seeing a post we like and automatically hitting the 'share' button. For new Steemians, with a limited number of followers, there's a much better way of showing your appreciation. If you use @resteemable to share the post,it will be shown to a much wider audience, without depleting your bandwidth.
You can still resteem posts, to your followers, of course, but just reduce the number of resteems by being more discerning over the articles you choose for them to see.
5. Post Regularly.This may seem like conflicting advice, but it's to do with consistency. The longer that you are dormant (inactive), the more likely you are to lose bandwidth. Remember, you earn greater rewards for good quality content, which increases your bandwidth. Also, because of the 'blockchain platform'(which I don't pretend to understand at this stage), inactivity can mean you lose your portion of bandwidth on a particular chain, at least as far as I can ascertain.
There are ways of increasing your bandwidth by purchasing Steem, using other crypto currencies, but I'm, currently, still learning how to do that myself, so I'll leave that for another post.
Ending On A Positive Note
(Image source: elearningbrothers.com)
I have two pieces of GREAT NEWS. Firstly, if, in the unfortunate event, you exceed your bandwidth limit....simply wait, (distract yourself by taking up a hobby like knitting or macrame 😉), and before you know it, your bandwidth will be restored. It'll normally take around an hour, but occasionally you may need to wait until the following day.
Secondly, I have heard on the grapevine, that Steemit are working on this issue, so hopefully, before long, this post will be obsolete and we can all enjoy, many uninterrupted hours of happy Steeming!
I hope you found this article interesting and of some help to you. If there's anything I have missed, or you have any questions, then please feel free to mention it in the comments below.
You are good @looksfarwoman... very very good ;)
You flatterer you! Don't stop. 😜
I didn't realize so many things we do here affect bandwidth, so thanks for this. I'll have to try and be more mindful of what I'm doing. It's hard, though, when I do actually find something interesting or worthwhile in what seems to be ever increasing clutter. :)
I agree. It can be difficult to find articles that are interesting to your particular interests. I've actually found people to follow, who have commented on something I've written and ended up making some great friends. It takes a little time to acclimatise, but after a while, you'll be posting, making friends and finding interesting articles in no time.
I've found that comment upvoting, even on well thought out ones, is becoming less and less common as the value of steem/sbd goes up. People are getting stingey (sp?) with votes and comments are where it's lacking the most. :-/
I didn't realise that, I guess I'm too new to have a basis for comparison. That's such a shame, when my vote counts for something, I like to show appreciation for both good posts and great comments. I think I'm unlikely to change on this score as, although money is nice, I much prefer to be part of a community that appreciates and supports each other. From what I gather, we need to be careful with our voting, too much and we'll run out of steam (pardon the pun), not enough and we'll lose voting weight, so there is still a good incentive to upvote valuable content/comments.
Thanks for posting this. Today is my first day on Steemit so I've been doing my best to explore and interact to try and get to know the platform and the community. I thought it would be similar to reddit, but it's not. It's a fundamentally different experience, because there are incentives built in for people to post nice and constructive comments. I like the idea of dis-incentivizing trolling by making it expensive, but this was my first introduction to of the concept "bandwith".
Welcome to Steemit, and thanks for reading my post. I only learned about bandwidth, when I exceeded it and then spent a day, trying to find out what to do. You may find, that you never have this problem, which is great, but I came across a few posts from people, having the same issue. That's what prompted me to write this.
It's a great community on here, and, although I only joined a couple of weeks ago myself, I've made some great friends. I'm sure you're going to have great fun, and if I can do anything to help, just give me a shout.
Thank you for this — I’ve been devouring all the info I can find about how this all works. It’s A LOT to take in, and a lot of articles are written by fairly experienced Steemians who forget that a whole bunch of us aren’t yet in the know nor well-versed in Steemit lingo. You’ve explained things clearly and concisely, in an easily digestible tone. Much appreciated!
Thank you. I completely agree, some of those posts, look like they are probably simple, but like anything, until you understand the terminology, it may as well be a completely different language. We'll get there. I'll keep posting as I find things out. Also, do you follow @davemccoy? He's great at explaining things and has produced some really helpful posts.
Yes! You led me to him. 😉 I’m already feeling more confident about how I engage with this space. Can only go up from here!
Absolutely! If in doubt....jump right in and try anyway. There's enough of us watching each others backs. Besides there's nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain.
Huh, interesting! I've never managed to reduce my bandwidth below even 95%, so it's fascinating to me that people actually run up against the limit. You're probably right that it's a result of old Facebook habits.
That's brilliant. I wish I could have avoided the pitfalls, but I've always been one for doing things the hard way 😆. It's probably not a hugely common problem, but as new people are joining everyday, migrating from other social media sites, those bad habits are potentially going to be a stumbling block for new Steemians, not just in terms of bandwidth, but things like upvoting as well.
It's a major failing of the Steemit UI that people have to jump out to another site to see the status of their voting power. :/
I agree it's a pain in the neck. I imagine it's teething troubles. I know a lot of work goes on in the background to continually improve the user experience. I imagine, particularly as the site is growing rapidly, that there'll be a few more bumps in the road. We've joined this relatively early in it's evolution (just in time I suspect), it may require a little patience on our part, and some steep learning curves, but I can't help thinking it's going to be worth it. I think (although I'm not sure how yet), that you can give suggestions and ideas for improvements. I'll see if I can find out. It would be great to see things more streamlined in the future.
@looksfarwoman Thank you so much for creating this post! Big help :)
I just recently experienced that bandwidth issue and had no absolute idea what was it about. Now I came across your post and I am very thankful of the tips you mentioned here. Kudos! :)
You're entirely welcome. I only learned this from my own mistakes. When you're new to Steemit it's a steep learning curve, and I often find some of the posts, by more experienced Steemians, tend to go over my head. We 'newbies' should stick together and share what we've learned. It all goes toward building a stronger community on this awesome site.
Hit the nail on the head @looksfarwoman! Perfect echo of another comment I just left for ya! 👍🏼 You’re awesome.
Thank you so much. I aim to please. 😊. It's the advantage of being an under achiever......I make more mistakes, so have to find the solutions. Lol.
Well then — thank you for f^€king up so the rest of us don’t have to! 😂 (said lovingly, of course.)
😂😂😂😂 I can always guarantee, f#*k"Ng up IS my area of expertise. 😘
I've been on here for about 3 weeks now, and I had no idea any of this was a thing.
LOL. I only know because I ran out of bandwidth. You may be lucky and not have this problem, but it's good practice anyway, to be creative with our posting. There's so much to learn about this platform, I'm sure my inept experimenting will ferret out more potential pitfalls. 😂
Interesting, I did not know that there was a limit on the bandwidth on steemit. I am not sure if I had a problem with it either, unless that error message that occurred the other day had something to do with it? Do hi resolution images have an effect on bandwidth?
I'm not sure, I think it might depend on how the image is put in, but I would imagine so. I'll look into it today as I've already been looking into images for a different reason. That's the thing with being new, something to learn every day. I'll let you know what I find later today, unless you beat me to it. 😉
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Thankyou for sharing @looksfarwoman
You are entirely welcome. I hope it helps.
@resteemable
Thanks @looksfarwoman for this tips... also a newbie here... followed u with @davemccoy too. Absolutely brilliant tips on getting started in steemit. A whole new learning curve for me.
You're welcome. Sounds like you're off to a flying start. I've followed you, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Welcome to Steemit. 😊
Thanks @looksforwoman for sharing this articles. I just hit my bandwidth yesterday, without knowing what had happened. Waited for a whole day to reply or commented :)
I've been there (earlier today but don't tell anyone). I'm so glad it helped. I'm sure we'll all be posting our tips in no time.
Hello, thanks for sharing your experience with the bandwidth issue. I was not aware of it and luckily haven't experienced the issue...yet. Started on Steemit about 7 days ago and trying to be a sponge and learn as much as possible. This post was just another lesson learned.
You're welcome. Have you followed @davemccoy yet. He's cleverer than me but not as pretty 😜
I have followed him. There is just so much to learn about Steemit. It's been a wonderful experience so far.
It's addictive. And everyone I've met so far is so lovely.
Yes, it is a very productive place, unlike other social media platforms.
Thank you so much for this, I only wish I'd seen it last week! Haha I actually just wrote a blog about this, thanking @luzcypher because I ended up with the the dreaded "no bandwidth" error message and he gave me 5 STEEM to keep me going!! I was very pleasantly surprised! @davemccoy!! How did I miss your "Voting Power" blog?? :) Thanks to both of you!
It's a great community on here. I know my first couple of weeks was a steep learning curve and there's still loads to learn. I figured that if I'm having problems with something, then my fellow newbies, would likely be struggling too. 😉
Thanks for explaining this. Up until now I never had an issue with bandwidth, so I never bothered to look up what it was standing for. (Isn’t that what we all do: only investigate when we run into trouble? - lol)
Every day I spend on SteemIt I’m learning something new, thanks to people like you. Keep up the good work, I’ll be on the lookout for more posts :-)
Thank you. Yes, I'm definitely a 'look at the instructions when I go wrong' sort of person. Probably why I make so many mistakes. LOL
:-)
That is exactly true. I noticed that the first blog I posted was way too long, and no pictures. It didn’t garner any interest. Lesson learned.
I agree, I think it's just a question of continually improving and finding our niche.
Interesting, I have learnt something. Thanks for the article
You're welcome. I'm glad you found it helpful. Just trying to help my fellow newbies. 😉
Thanks for news
Wow. Thanks for such great piece of Advise.
I never really knew about how bandwidth works even though i heard about it once, but then again, how does one check his or her bandwidth levels. So adjustments can be made
You can check your bandwidth levels here: https://steemd.com/@yourusername I have also just posted an addendum to this article with some additional information. As far as I can tell increases in bandwidth come from curation and author rewards or by purchasing Steem using crypto currency. Given that, if you do lose bandwidth, it will be restored after a short wait, patience is probably my best advice.
lol patience indeed. Thanks for your help
My pleasure, I'm glad it helps. Bear in mind I'm only a few days ahead of you and learned this through having the problem myself. Lol
Thanks, i just followed you now. Hope you are having a great time here?
I'm absolutely loving it. I've made some great friends and really enjoyed writing and curating. Onwards and upwards for us all.
yeah, i think that is the best part of steemit, you enjoy writing and talking about things, most especially deep life issues.
i hope you'll stop by my blog someday and find something amazing to read about my life. Thanks