Last night was a Slashdot post. Right now a Digg post is hitting me hard. Of course that would happen right after I do a separate post with a bunch of images. 
I’ve yanked my logo image and the post with multiple images to batten down the hatches. Let’s hope my industrial-strength hosting on pair.com holds up with the images gone..
Added: Oh, hello Techmeme, come on in and sit down. After Digg and Slashdot are done slagging the site, you’re welcome to pummel it too.
{ 53 comments… read them below or add one }
Good luck Matt!
Your hosting is having major issues today Matt.
Time to change hosting, Matt
what would interresting is to see what your log files and the modern day slash – digg effect looks like. could be a nice write up
I’d think images would be less of a problem (that’s just bandwidth). Having dynamic php/sql-generated pages is what really hits the server hard. Try installing WP-Cache. I’ve had lots of success with it.
http://mnm.uib.es/gallir/wp-cache-2/
David, I was going to wait for the hubbub to die down and then start asking questions. I’ll definitely try this plug-in soon though; thanks for mentioning it.
Welcome to the linkbait club, baby.
Well at least someone loves you.
No wait, they’re all slagging you
It can only be a good thing that more people find out about your blog – it is probably one of the few really human interfaces Google has (no offense to the great guys over on Groups, but they are quite stretched).
Thanks for responding earlier BTW.
Should just host it on Google’s servers.
Having too much traffic on your website is like having too much money for your wallet. Yeah you have to go buy a bigger wallet, but you really don’t mind that much.
Matt,
You know how the saying goes, it doesn’t matter what people say about you as long as they link to your blog.
WP Cache 2 is excellent. Of course, it’s never been exercised very heavily on my site, but it was easy to install and administer.
Thanks for the great entry earlier, Matt. I saw the slashdot story first and was glad that your $0.02 got linked to.
Hosting….GRRRRRRR….I have had too many hosting problems in the past. I’m happy with my current host now. Has not gone down once even with all I load it up with!
Matt. I think you are becoming way too popular…LOL
@JHL But Matt doesn’t have ads plastered all over his site
Your host needs a decent load balancer..! You could ask Google to lend them a couple of their Netscalers, or better still – implement a Zeus ZXTM!
I’ve implemented these enterprise load balancers in many hosting environments and Apache’s performance (esp Apache 1) literally trebles. Well worth the money. You can even assign bandwidth classes to protect against those pesky Slashdot hits
At least you’re populate
I don’t know if I would want a digg, i mean sure the traffic is good, but it hurts more than it helps
Matt,
Have you seen this website http://www.proxy7.com
If you do the site command on these guys they have what looks like hijacked pages… I am sure this site is causing good sites to tank since google has the pages cached. Its an advertising site.
I mean Popular
so you’re saying my Matt Cutts Scraper’s refresh rate should be set to higher than 1 second?
David,
It was an analogy; Money is to Wallet, as Traffic is to Hosting. I would assume that he has a blog because he wants too communicate some of his own personal thoughts. More traffic means more people are getting his message, thus a good thing, and figuring out how to better be able get that message served is better than throwing a party and not having anyone show up. whoops, there I mixed my analogies…oh well…I’m just a commentor.
What a sad existence some people live. How on Earth do they get by in life when they have zero common sense?
It’s an honor to get ./’ed!
Consider yourself lucky that your “competitors” didn’t submit your site to Google or Yahoo for dead links!
Matt,
I recently was digg’d + del.icio.us’d on the same day and WP-Cache made ALL he difference. At first I could really feel the weight, but after setting up the plugin it was smooth sailing as if nothing was happening.
I second the notion. You’ll really notice a difference.
No good deed goes unpunished.
I’ve had a similar question on this subject for a long time, and one of the Digg-types made me want to ask it publicly, so here goes:
Matt: your blog is painfully obviously a source of traffic and interest. It’s also a source of goodwill for your employer, as you may well have put out more fires for them in the past year than anyone.
Google does have servers configured for web hosting.
So the question is: why not let them at least foot the bill for the hosting that you’re likely paying out your own pocket?
Multi-Worded Adam, I like having things be separate. I’m sure google would be happy to host the blog or to pay for it, but this gives me the freedom to criticize Google if I think we deserve it.
Ahhhh…touché. I stand humbly corrected.
Matt
Would you be kind to consider soon a special X-Mas edition of “Grabbag”. Otherwise I would keep posting off-topic
Have a great day!
Apparently, there were many other popular Social sites that picked up the story – within HOURS of its debut.
The results on Yahoo SiteExplorer started displaying the BackLinks in just a few hours after the story appeared
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattcutts.com%2Fblog%2Fhow-google-handles-hacked-sites&bwm=i&bwms=p&bwmf=u&fr=yfp-t-501&fr2=seo-rd-se
.
Apparently, there were many other popular Social sites that picked up the story – within HOURS of its debut.
The results on Yahoo SiteExplorer started displaying the BackLinks in just a few hours after the story appeared
siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattcutts.com%2Fblog%2Fhow-google-handles-hacked-sites&bwm=i&bwms=p&bwmf=u&fr=yfp-t-501&fr2=seo-rd-se
JLH,
You’re right. I went off on a tangent because with so many people whenever they talk about getting traffic, the first thing out of their mouth is how to “monetize” it.
Good analogies.
--David.
Congratulation Matt adouble score for YOU, Slash and Digg together is very awesome. I guess their visitors just love your blog.
Thank you for sharing this story with me !
Lani, thanks--it’s my first slashdotting in years.
wp-cache is a nice plug-in. give it a try. while dynamic pages will be your biggest problem, images/http-requests are the next big thing. so you were right with getting rid of it…
btw: placing .css and related files on another host helps, too. maybe you can rely on google for this. that’s perfect separation of content and design
and they wont be able to hide your content per css in case of criticism… since hidden text is not consistent with googles guidelines
Why not host images off-site, like PicasaWeb (or Flickr
).
Well, you might be getting plenty of traffic, but as of 10:10GMT in the UK, both the Google Toolbar and Searchstatus are reporting your PR as 0.
@limestone: that’s because matt disabled the javascript that fakes his PR7, too for performance issues
Sorry OT here, but a quick suggestion/request Matt.
I like to read your blog, but often don’t have time to read all comments.
I like the way you often reply every 20 or so comments with a summary
and answers to some of the questions, so usualy skip through just to read your comments (I suspect a lot of others do this too)
To make it easier for us, would it be possible to have your own comments highlighted better (different background colour, different text colour for your name, or something like that)?
Thanks, and sorry for posting it here, don’t know any other way of making suggestions.
I read that using wp-cache can take the load off your server and help it survive a digging.
Matt,
I’ve used the wordpress cache plugin and it works pretty good when you’re ‘digged’.
Doug
The new face of SEO manipulation:
http://www.respond.com/
Covering every field know to man in every state and city.
Matt,
I have started a new website offering unique services for free, I’m hoping I will be getting a lot of hit per day. The website stores allot of user information. I’m worried that the server can’t handle all these data transactions, are there any tools or methods on the server side to help me reduce the bandwidth?
Brad
Ewwwwwwwww…respond.com. Those idiots wouldn’t leave me alone for about a year. I finally had to threaten them with legal action before they’d stop calling.
The sad thing is the entire http://www.repond.com site is a MFA with hundreds of subdomains and not only does Google love them, it rewards them with top spots across a broad range of subjects.
Guess building large MFA sites and stuffing them with plagarized content from many different industries is the new way forward with Google at least.
Hey Matt
Welcome to the world of Digg. always be prepared.
Australian SEO with respect.
“Having too much traffic on your website is like having too much money for your wallet. Yeah you have to go buy a bigger wallet, but you really don’t mind that much. ”
heh heh
What did Kieth Richards say?
“No press is bad press”
“Running a business has risks, as does having all your eggs in one basket, but if theres only one basket it’s tempting to just eat the chicken and forget the eggs.”
Who is gonna tell them ?
So what will be the solution for this? The solution suggested by david is a good one. But I also want to know some other solutions for this.
Matt,
Would you be able to tell me what’s wrong with this sitemap. Google keeps rejecting it. I’ve done similar sitemaps without issue?
http://www.hmsassociates.net/sitemap.xml
Thanks
Dave
With so many hits..too bad it would be unethical for you to throw out some Adsense!
Hey Matt nice work
A Digg and slashdot..
keep up the good work
Your helping the webmaster & seo community more than you know
cheers
I don’t think the slagging on such sites would have any effect on the site as the actual fact is already mentioned in your earlier post. The slagging is baseless and assumptions are being made regardless of the facts being totally different.