The Digg Effect
April 13th, 2007 Filed in: News & Updates Jump to commentsAs 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:
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:
- Ten things you should know about Digg effect
- Surviving the Digg effect
- Dealing with Digg effect
- How to prepare your site for Digg effect
- High traffic tips for WordPress
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:
April 28th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Wow, you’re on a dedicated server and even that couldn’t handle the traffic? That says a lot about the server you bought I guess. What are you paying monthly for it?
And SurviveDigg.com is a joke. You should see some of the transcripts I have of emails regarding how they handle a hard it.
On the other hand, the host I’m with now had zero problems with my most recent article taking a hard hit (hit the #1 spot on Delicious, Dzone, and numerous other places, doing up to 4k/uniques per hour during peak times).
…and I’m on shared hosting.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Nick,
Is it just me, or have you have totally been ripped off?
See www.maxspeeds.com
Or maybe you have released your blog theme and I missed it somewhere?
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
That effect was called getting slashdotted, back in the days ;)
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:40 am
http://www.maxspeeds.com/
hey, see this, a whole clone.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:07 pm
you’re theme is also in a tutorial of an Italia magazine “Web Designer”
April 20th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Wow, glad that your site got on digg.
The server must of taken a beating.
April 18th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Glad you got dugg.
Nick, you should try www.survivedigg.com if you feel like you are going to get dugg.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Well, congrats on the getting Dugg. It’s probably a good thing that I haven’t experienced the Digg Effect since I’m not on a dedicated server. I’m surprised that Media Temple couldn’t handle it.
April 18th, 2007 at 1:11 am
Congrats mate on being dugg :), but I read it on your that you have switched to a dedicated server. So even dedicated server was unable to resist Digg effect?
April 17th, 2007 at 6:27 am
James David beat me to it, SurviveDigg.com is your best option if you hit the digg main page regularly and want your site to get through it without any problems.