The Digg Effect

April 13th, 2007 Filed in: News & Updates Jump to comments

As you might have noticed that my site is loading very slow today and sometime not even available. This is because someone submitted my iTheme (WordPress theme) to Digg. The good news: I was dugg, but the news: my site was completely down last night for couple hours. If you were on my site last night, you probably had experienced the downtime. This is known as the "Digg effect". Digg effect is "the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic."

Usually, my server (Media Temple’s dedicated server) is very stable which can manage my high traffic site (12,000+ visitors daily). But I was very disappointed that it couldn’t handle the Digg effect. As soon my link made to the Digg front page, my site immediately became very slow and sometime unavailable. This is cause by the high demand of server requests and database queries. There was nothing much I could do about it since my server’s CPU was at 100%. Well, I guess it is time to look for a better host or server upgrade.

The chart below shows that my site was down for about 6 hours:
webstats

Getting dugg is good because it brings you traffic and exposure, but it also has side effects such as server downtime and bandwidth excess. If you think you might get dugg next, be sure to prepare for it. Here are some links on how to handle the Digg effects:

P.S. I’m very excited to get dugg and thanks to all diggers who dugg my link. Also check out my previous dugg links:

kac

# 12

April 16th, 2007 at 7:10 am

Disons que c’est le résultat du succès :)

Miles Johnson

# 11

April 15th, 2007 at 3:36 am

Dont you just hate the little mac fanboys.

Meli

# 10

April 15th, 2007 at 12:17 am

Hey! Just want you to know that I somehow stumbled upon your site (it may have been google, but I don’t remember how it was a few days ago…) and have fallen in love. You’ve been bookmarked and RSS subscribed. Anyhow, I love your portfolio as well as all of your free/cheap stuff. I may have to buy some of those icons in the future.

I don’t think the digg effect would hit me too hard… I’m really lucky to get fifty hits on my blog (not the one listed) in a day. I’m not sure how the new folio will fare. I’ll be one of those people who someone finally diggs and I’m back on the last page or so. :)

iTheme is beautiful, by the way. I’ve just started using it on my blog, and all of its little features keep surprising me… in a good way. Keep up the good work.

Frox

# 9

April 14th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

Well, it sure is one magnificent theme ^^
Don’t know if I gotta congratulate you on this :P

Kory Twaites

# 8

April 14th, 2007 at 1:20 am

I was part of that Digg traffic that came through, although I’ve already subscribed to your feed, and have visited the site a number of times.

The Digg traffic really did some damage, I see now. Your page took a good…. 2 min. to load for me, and the background didn’t even load. I’m sure that oen of the things that totally killed your website was not only the hits, but also the downloads. Judging from people asking for alternative links, the visitors plus the people downloading, I see people blaming WP, but I really think it’s more than just WP.

Cesar

# 7

April 14th, 2007 at 12:40 am

Wow!!! I noticed that the site was down trying to access at 3am :P but in one way that’s real good you’ll how your visitors increment in the next days and you can take good advantage of that.

Great work you’ve done so keep doing it! ;)

Bye and it would be nice if you post some replies to the comments some times I haven’t see any replies to comments.

Bye!

Eugene

# 6

April 13th, 2007 at 11:02 pm

I dugged you too! Pretty amazing theme you had there! iTheme! Tested it with other site and its awesome! Truly an amazing design. I was wondering if I can use the icons you used there?

Ilham Hafizovic

# 5

April 13th, 2007 at 8:43 pm

Wow that was crazy, I never heard of the Digg Effect! But wow 6 hours straight that is a lot! Anyways currently I am also using WP, but am working on little applications using PHP yo create my own form of Blog site! But for now WP is all the way!