Can your website cope?
Posted 5 September 2006 at 5:36PM by Derek Hemphill in Managing your website
Reuters reported today that the news of Steve Irwin's untimely death yesterday caused chaos on the web as some sites were struggling to cope with the increased traffic. Apparently Oz's answer to the BBC (www.abc.com.au) had to temporarily shut its site down due to "higher than normal traffic".
Blogs and forums also took a pounding as mourning fans posted tributes to The Crocodile Hunter.
If your website is vital to your business, some basic precautions may save you from disaster in the event of a sudden increase in traffic:
Closely monitor trends in your website traffic using tracking software such as the Webtrends or Omniture. There are also some free tools available such as Google Analytics and StatCounter.com.
Check with your web hosting company that your site could cope with at least twice the level of traffic it normally receives. You may have a limit on the level of traffic your site can cope with at one time (bandwidth) or a maximum monthly data transfer allowance. A flexible web hosting solution that can automatically scale-up to cope with demand will ensure your visitors are not left out in the cold.
You may also find Business Link's advice about website hosting options useful.
Tags: blog, forum, internet traffic, Steve Irwin, web analytics, web hosting
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