{"id":69,"date":"2008-09-08T14:49:46","date_gmt":"2008-09-08T13:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2021-03-05T08:46:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T07:46:27","slug":"9-tips-to-help-your-website-cope-with-huge-traffic-spikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/9-tips-to-help-your-website-cope-with-huge-traffic-spikes","title":{"rendered":"9 Tips to Help Your Website Cope With Huge Traffic Spikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"There are times when your website might experience short periods of very high traffic. This could be the result of TV exposure, or your linkbait<\/a> just hit the front page of Digg. The worst thing that can happen at this point is that your site can’t cope – this becomes a huge missed opportunity.<\/p>\n

Here are some tips to help you plan to stay online and available.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1. Use static page cacheing<\/h3>\n

Use a plugin such as WP-Cache<\/a> for WordPress. For for a custom coded site, use mod_rewrite to replace your dynamically generated page with a statically built one for the period of the spike, then switch back to dynamic when traffic returns to normal.<\/p>\n

2. Use Memcache<\/h3>\n

Memcache<\/a> gives you a super-fast alternative to pulling everything out of a database. This is particularly useful on sites which have mostly database reads, and few database writes such as CMS, blogs etc.<\/p>\n

3. Keep the page light<\/h3>\n

If the traffic is going to hit a single page, keep it light. Use a tool like Firebug<\/a> to check the HTML size and image sizes. Ensure the images are compressed properly, and consider temporarily removing weighty layout blocks or switching to a lightweight template for a while. If required, seek help from professionals like\u00a0OutsourceSEO India<\/a>\u00a0ot enhance your website.<\/p>\n

4. Split your content over multiple pages<\/h3>\n

Rather than one large page (which everyone tries to load once, at the same time), split your content over multiple, sequential pages. This will reduce the load into more smaller requests over a longer period.<\/p>\n

5. Have a code-tidy<\/h3>\n

Use this review as an opportunity to reduce the weight of your pages. Look at the code of your pages. Do you still have tables and font tags?\u00a0 Switch to a div-based layout and CSS. Abstract any in-line CSS and JavaScript into separate files.<\/p>\n

6. Host your images\/media off-site<\/h3>\n

If you think you are going to have bandwidth issues, put your images somewhere<\/a> else – with a different host, on a different network. If you need to choose the host, use tools such as traceroute<\/a> to ensure they are<\/strong> actually in a different place and network path. Put your video on a sharing service such as Youtube and then embed it in your page.<\/p>\n

7. Check your hosting plan for hard limits<\/h3>\n

You might have been through all the tips above, and the site is performing fine … right up until your host switches your site to a page telling everyone you just exceeded your bandwidth limit! Check what you are paying for and make sure this is enough. Talk to your host to see if the limit can be temporarily removed.<\/p>\n

8. Find out about the infrastructure of your host<\/h3>\n

This is less important if you are with a big, well-known host, but then these people are likely to publish information about their infrastructure and internet pipes anyway. This becomes important is when you are with ‘Bob’s hosting’, and he is hosting you on his rented box with 1,000 other low-bandwidth sites and a throttled internet connection. Is the server capable of supporting a high traffic spike? Does it have a 100M\/Gigabit path to the internet? Check out Eatel Business\u2019s offering<\/a> on internet connections and plans.<\/span><\/p>\n

9. Go dedicated\/clustered\/grid<\/h3>\n

You might think you are already paying a handsome price for your hosting, but what is it actually worth to you to stay up? If you were down for an hour at what should be a busy time, what would you stand to loose? In the case of an e-commerce site this should be pretty easy to calculate and you may actually be surprised at what you stand to loose! Look at your hosting cost from this perspective, and it may be that the upgrade to the next level of hosting suddenly looks cheap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are times when your website might experience short periods of very high traffic. This could be the result of TV exposure, or your linkbait just hit the front page of Digg. The worst thing that can happen at this point is that your site can’t cope – this becomes a huge missed opportunity. Here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":705,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}