Recently I have succumbed to a couple of front page appearances on the popularity website Digg.com. Though I had the WP-Super-Cache WordPress plug-in enabled, my server crashed. Twice. The problem is that my sites have been hosted on shared servers, and the CPU resources (and possibly memory) were consumed, crashing the systems.
First I had to move from Host Gator to The Prime Host, and now I’ve had to move from The Prime Host to one of my friend’s VPS systems hosted at HostForWeb.com. Now I’m looking into getting a dedicated server over at eSecureData.com and loading up the software manually. Whatever it takes to keep the Digg gators at bay I guess.
Unfortunately Project Swole does not make any money, so I might institute a PayPal donations button here shortly, although I don’t expect anyone to actually use it. I don’t want to add any additional advertising to the site though, so I’m going to have to figure out a way to support this. Not quite sure what I’m going to do yet.
So anyway, if you plan on sticking with Project Swole through all of this Digg mayhem then I thank you immensely. Although I am extremely busy with my personal life right now, I am definitely going to try to keep posting regularly. The information should still be worthwhile, as I plan to tackle more specific and hardcore topics than stuff like “10 Ways to Diet Better“. If you stick around long enough, you are in for a treat.
That’s it for now, I’ve gotta get back to work.
Hey Steve,
I was wondering what happened.
I’m sure everything will work out for the best.
Too much traffic is a good thing to have.
It’s better than no traffic.
Best of luck to you.
Peace.
Steve, I had the same issues with my site this past holiday season, not from Digg, but from massive amounts of traffic all at once. I ended up moving to RackSpace, but you may not need to. Here is what I learned:
1. Make sure your pages are accessible without database calls. This means the entire page. WordPress may need to go, not the VPS. In theory, serving a simple HTML document is faster than one that calls a DB every request.
2. Have a fat pipe going to the server. A 10Mb network connection will not cut it. 100Mb or bigger.
3. Make sure the host you choose has a big fat pipe into their facility. The faster the page and elements on it are sent, the faster it can handle the next request.
I will keep the site going, but I just can’t submit to Digg anymore until I get my dedicated server. But I just went on a interview with Fidelity today so I might get a tight software engineering contract pretty soon. Sweeeet.
I’m sad to hear about your problems keeping this project up but I hope you can keep the site up because your advice is invaluable.