How to: Survive the Digg Effect (The Ultimate Guide)
Forty thousand hits in one day may sound like every webmaster’s dream for their site, but in reality it can be a nightmare. A massive influx of traffic from Digg has the power to cripple or crash your website. Are you ready to get Dugg? Here are a few tips to help you ride out the storm.
Get fair warning.
Digg Notify is a tool that informs you of the amount of diggs that your story has received. It will also let you know when your story hits the front page. Watching interest build in your story isn’t just fun: it’s crucial. If you get caught off-guard, the Digg effect can bury your site.
Get friendly with your hosting company.
Before facing Diggstruction, call your hosting company to find out what they’d do in a high traffic situation. Would they leave your site down for hours while you miss out on thousands of unique visitors? Or would they take quick action to give your site the resources it needs? If you’re not getting a warm and fuzzy feeling from your provider, shop around until you find a company that is able to fit your needs. You don’t want to get stuck with an unhelpful or unresponsive hosting company when you need help the most.
Key questions to ask your host:
Do they want notification when you’re being Dugg? Some hosts will take your site down because they suspect you’re being attacked.
Will you need a larger hosting package? Consider this: Paying $50 more per year is a lot better than being suddenly hit with $800 in overage charges. If you can afford it, go for a dedicated server rather than one that you have to share with other sites.
Can you get a free upgrade? Monetize recommends bartering. If your page is, or will be, subject to a flood of hits, try to get a free upgrade by offering to link to their service.
Design for Digg.
Even with a supportive host you will need to optimize your site for an inundation of visitors. You’ll need to deal with heavy script and large files in order to keep up.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Host your images and media files away from your site. Use a separate hosting company for these resources. Places like Flickr and YouTube offer great, free services for separate hosting.
Have a simple HTML page ready.
If you don’t want to make these design changes for everyday use, at least have an uncomplicated page ready in case of a Digg emergency. If you think your article is going to receive a flood of Diggs, create a landing page with straightforward HTML where you can redirect traffic if you start to go under.
Get some Cache.
Good design is key. But, if you’re getting crushed, your site will need an extra boost to stay up. Try using cached pages. It will help with site performance and may just give you the extra edge you’ll need to keep up with the traffic.
Install the WordPress caching module.This plugin lets you serve more pages per second by caching and storing pages in a static file. Requests go through the file rather than through PHP code and the database. Johnny’s Thoughts offers a tutorial on using WP-Cache 2.0.
Redirect to DuggMirror or Coral.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. If your site takes a nosedive, redirect Diggers to a mirror site. You’ll miss out on getting links, but at least you’ll get readers to your article. DuggMirror makes a copy of all stories submitted to Digg. Michi Kono’s blog offers a guide to redirecting to DuggMirror. Another option is using Coral. Shoemoney offers code for the Coral tool on his site.
Get testy.
Make sure these changes are helpful for your site by putting it through a stress test. Tarotoast recommends using, Apache Benchmarking, to see how your site holds up. Other resources are WAPT and Web Application Stress Tool.
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Staff :: May.12.2007 :: Features ::