On November 14th, Craving Tech had around 10,000 visitors coming from all over the place such as Neowin.net, Lifehacker.com, CNET.com, TomsHardware.com, and TheRegister.co.uk. The most visited post was the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta screenshots that I posted after work (around 7 p.m AEST).
I knew the post was going to be a hit because the screenshots and short impressions of the Office 2010 official beta weren’t available anywhere on the net yet. Knowing about the going-to-be-a-very-popular-post, I did… nothing! to prepare for the traffic spike. I had confidence that this blog would withstand such a sudden “brute attack”.
How to prepare your WordPress blog for a huge incoming traffic
- Install WP-SuperCache plug-in (A MUST).
In the past, I had a sudden spiked traffic from StumbleUpon when the Battlefield Heroes Beta post received around 15,000 visitors in 2 days. My blog was taken down temporarily because the server couldn’t cope with such a dramatic traffic. I didn’t have any caching mechanism installed at that time. Last week was the prove that caching works well on your blog! More details on why caching is important for your blog and how WP-SuperCache works. - Reduce WordPress CPU Usage as much as you can.
Don’t install non-necessary plug-ins and don’t use overly complicated theme. Head off to my Blogging Guide series page and check out the How to reduce WordPress CPU usage section to optimize your blog. The Arthemia Premium theme that I used is a trimmed down version (the original has some random posts feature that would bring extra CPU usage to the table). - Go for a more expensive but more reliable web hosting.
Don’t always go for the cheapest when you are looking for a good web host. Those unlimited and free stuffs sound good but not all web hosts are reliable. I needed to exchange about 40 support tickets with my old hosting for a CPU usage problem before I decided to move to HostGator. From 66% CPU usage on the old web host to 0.1% CPU usage on the new one? That’s crazy. Check out my HostGator review post for more details on my migration story and if you are thinking to move to a new web host. - Switch to a simpler theme temporarily.
If you really think that you are going to get hundreds of thousands of traffic in a day, it’s always a good idea to switch to a very basic theme to accommodate. It’s better for the visitors to see a plain theme that works rather than getting those connection to server fail errors!
Mind you, this blog is still hosted on a shared server (for about $7 a month). You don’t need to pay for a dedicated (or a Virtual Private Server hosting) yet as long as you *at least* install WP-SuperCache and make sure that it works. My old web host kept on nagging me to pay for $30 a month for a dedicated. I almost got persuaded but thank God I didn’t!
Do you have any horror stories to share about a massive unexpected traffic in the past?
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Amazing traffic! I was interested in how did you get visitors coming from CNET?
Thanks, Van. I submitted my post link to a thread at neowin.net. Somehow it got to the main page. From there on, it was like a chain!
I am with a private hosted plan with Dreamhost and my website suffers outages when I have a spike of 30+ visits at the same time, 5000 visits a day would cripple my site likely. Even with me paying $30 per month to my hosting provider and having almost 300mb of RAM to my VPS.
Sounds like you have some big problems to work out. Can you post the stats of your VPS, as well as what it runs, etc? the key is to minimize the resources per hit.
Yeah. It shouldn’t happen and I thought DreamHost is a good host too.
Definitely can’t beat my $8 a month on a shared server
Great man
congrats. and hope you get such traffic very often…
That is nice. Looks like one like post from you.
I went through Traffic attack once 3 years ago when one of my blog posts made it to the front page of digg. Needless to say, I started receiving all kinds of emails from my host (can’t name them, not their fault) and then I changed hosts.
Hostgator seems to be the best one around but if your blog seems to be getting decent traffic, you should always consider going for VPS.
Zahid Lilani´s last blog ..Clixtr Launches Its Newly Revamped Homepage
Not until I can reach a good constant high traffic. At this stage, this blog only gets around 1000-1500 visitors a day and mostly come from search engines (inconsistent)
Yeah, I agree that web hosting is important part for big traffic blog. I face the problem with my current hosting regarding the capacity, and i already ask hostgater guy if they can help my blog moving.
Dana @ Online Knowledge´s last blog ..Blogging Disaster Recovery
They did the move for me last time. Took them less than an hour on the weekend to move all my blog files from the old one to the new one. Could have never been happier
Hope I could benefit from this too.
Wow! 10k traffic! That’s hell lot! This must be your first major achievement since you changed to new domain.
It was. The name was good too so those big sites won’t have problems linking to “Craving Tech” rather than a “Michael Aulia’s Blog”
Well I’m glad Craving Tech is working out for you Michael. I was a bit doubtful when your main reason was for having a good domain name to sell later on, but now I am happy with the change.
Omg!!! That is a big flood. Good to see that you survived after the flood (tsunami.lol). Keep sharing such great info
Too bad it only lasted for a few days
the stumbleupon traffic had crashed my blog in the past, after several hours when the traffic used to slow down, then the blog used to get back online… godaddy is not a very good hosting, will transfer to hostgator soon,
also, will use the wp-cache plugin,
thanks,
I guess it also depends on your theme, how much traffic, and other things as well.
But the supercache plug-in definitely helps a lot, no matter which web hosting you use
I wish I had. Still, I know I will. Hey thanks for sharing WP-supercache plugin. I want to install it on my blog.
Thank you for this Michael. I think we’re all secretly hoping our blogs will receive a high amount of traffic (and some of our blogs do of course, yours included!) but some of us, like me, are unprepared and unexperienced in how a server can fail. Getting prepared for traffic before disaster happens is a relief. Thanks for this post!
Edit: If your Microsoft Office 2010 post received so much traffic, why is there so little comments? I understand of course that only a small percentage of visitors take the time to comment, but nevertheless, you’d expect a bit more conversation, no? Hmm, I guess there’s just more things to comment on and discuss on posts like these.
Michael, I’m adding the super Cache plugin as we speak. I think ti’s the most beneficial plugin you have mentioned here.
Thanks,
Brian
I am currently with Doreo.com – Except for some normal user complaints everyone have with their host, I was amazed at the way they handled my traffic 3 days ago. In fact I disabled my supercache plugin 5 days ago due to some htaccess corrupt problem. I didn’t reactivate it and then 3 days ago my traffic burst a bit and collected around 52000 uniques (around 70000 pageviews) over 2 days with at one particular time with around 600 people online at the same time.
It was night at my place and I was sleeping. The next day I woke up to see the traffic flood and that they managed to handle the site online all night long and no downtime and that’s too without SuperCache on
One disadvantage however is that Doreo is a bit expensive for a share. I pay $17 per month but for the reliability and the speed the reply tickets..it rocks.
As you said, better get a good host than go only for cheap claims. I am amazed at the way theyy handled my site coz my blog itself is very bulky. (Got to change my theme soon). But still it loads quite quickly even though there were so many people.
For supercache, I need to investigate this. There seem to be a problem when am using it. It’s always corrupting my htaccess file by adding loops.
Kurt Avish´s last blog ..Dreams And Their Meanings – The Subconscious Mind
Hey, thanks for the share, Kurt. It sounds like Doreo is another good host. I’ve honestly never heard of Doreo.com before but if it can survive 70,000 pageviews in 2 days then it must have been a good host! It is a bit pricey but you’ve got what you paid for!
Well, I’m with dreamhost and getting a bit tired of the downtime that they’ve been lately so am looking for alternatives now. They used to be pretty good earlier but the last few months have been a mess.
I once got about 15k hits within a couple of hours on my blog (didn’t have supercache enabled) and dreamhost disabled my account. I was asleep at the time and when I got up I opened a ticket and took me about an hour to get the account back up. Enabled supercache and it has been ok since then.
I thought Dreamhost is a good host too. But I guess 15,000 within a couple of hours without the supercache is going to strain any good hosting.
and also add some seo plugin, such as all in one seo, wp db cache, and setup your wordpress permalink… nice tips michael..