"If you don't know your bits from your gigs, you're going to run into trouble as an adult webmaster."

In the beginning, the switch is turned on and it feeds an electrical impulse to the chip. The chip wakes up and begins to vibrate. The vibrations emit a binary code of ones and zeros. These patterns of ones and zeros are translated into data. This data travels into the hard drive, looking for a command or software that will tell the computer that it is a computer.

At least, that's how I remember it. It's been a while since I've had the wonder of the personal computer explained to me. Maybe it's been a while for you too. Maybe you've never known how computers work. Maybe all you know is that you turn them on and they work. You're too interested in how the Internet works, namely the adult Internet.

That's a shame. Because this article is going to be all about bits, the bytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes and even exabytes! We're going to break this byte thing down into basic bits and work our way up.

If you don't know your bits from your gigs, you're going to run into trouble as an adult webmaster. From image optimization to the bandwidth usage, it's imperative that you understand these measurements.

Did you ever wonder why nobody wants to list your galleries or list your free site? Did your rejection emails mention terms like "slow loading" or "bandwidth hog"? Have other webmasters told you that you need to optimize your images? Has a TGP reviewer rejected your gallery submission due to "improper file size"?

How about that paid hosting? Are you getting your money's worth? Do you even know what is your moneys worth when it comes to storage, bandwidth and transfer? If you can't calculate the size of your site or page times the number of surfers downloading your content, then how will you know when you've exceeded the limitations of your hosting agreement?

This byte stuff matters. That's why I started this piece with the whole genesis, boot up analogy. If you want to learn the difference between a Megabyte as opposed to Gigabyte, you gotta start with the bits.

As I explained, the smallest measurement of data is a bit. A bit is a unit of code called binary. It's called binary because it's made up of either a one or a zero. Each one or zero is a bit. Eight bits equal a Byte. Bytes are tiny but bits are the smallest unit of data. It takes eight bits to make a Byte.

While a Byte is eight times bigger than a bit, a Kilobyte is one thousand Bytes. One Byte is large enough to translate into a word but it takes many many Bytes to create an image or small application. For example, a text file is small in size but it requires thousands of Bytes of data. A 45 Kilobyte text file contains 45,000 Bytes.

A Megabyte is one thousand Kilobytes. As an illustration, a 1.44 MB floppy disk is approximately one and a half Megabytes in size. When those old floppies first came out, they were just the right size for temporary data storage because even hard drives were no bigger than 300 Megabytes. That is until the Gigabyte came along.

The Gigabyte is made of one thousand Megabytes. Geeks everywhere celebrated the release of the first Gigabyte hard drive. Technophiles sang in the streets at the introduction of a wondrous world where a nerd could store massive amounts of data and download more on their nifty 56K modems. Today, a one-Gigabyte hard drive is just silly. Today we have hard drive capable of storing Gigs and Gigs and Gigs and Gigs.

When you go around measuring data, these are the denominations you need to care most about: Kilobytes, Megabytes and Gigabytes.

Kilobytes are very important when it comes to image optimization. One of the main reasons adult webmasters adopted Thumbnail Galleries was reduce file size. The linked thumbnails were smaller than the full sized images. That meant a surfer could load a page quickly. It meant that the webmaster would pay less for storage, bandwidth and transfer. Every image on your site should be optimized for size. Decorative graphics should be double-digit Kilobyte in size. A gallery thumbnail should be no bigger than 10-15 Kilobytes. A full sized image should be no bigger than 50-75 Kilobytes.

Megabytes matter when you want to perform basic webmaster calculations such as storage. As mentioned, a floppy will store 1.5 Megabytes of data. A CD can store almost 700-800 Megabytes. The average two-page, three-gallery free site should not contain much more than a few megabytes of images and documents. A beginner virtual host account will provide the webmaster with so many Megabytes of storage space. Say your new TGP gallery page is one Megabyte in size when you add up the thumbs, full size images, decorative graphics and HTML document. If your gallery is listed on a popular TGP, as many as 50,000 surfers could download your one-Megabyte gallery in a day. That brings us to Gigabytes.

A Gigabyte is one thousand Megabytes. When attending to transfer rates and costs, Gigabytes become very important. A small beginner hosting account will reward you with roughly 3/4 of a Gig for storage and as little as 20 Gigs for transfer. What happens to your hosting account if your transfers exceed your per monthly allotment?

Naturally, data measures only get bigger. There are Terabytes, comprised of one thousand Gigabytes. A Petabyte is one thousand Terabytes. An Exabyte is one thousand Petabytes. Bits beget Bytes. Bytes beget Kilobytes. Kilobytes beget Megabytes and Megabytes beget Gigabytes.

This is your measurement scripture. All hail the Bits!