Migrating from shared to dedicated hosting – Dodging Digg, Stumbleupon traffic problems

Like all growing blogs, I think the time has come for me too. Last week, there were two situations when two of my stories went on stumbleupon and got the server crashing, and account suspended.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Can stumbleupon crash your server? I thought the same too. I knew that digg front pages can give you headaches,but not stumbleupon. Seriously not.

Interestingly, the stories submitted to stumbleupon were not digg front page stuff or exclusive stories, but they were the normal “interesting” ones, that might have gathered a few hundred hits in less than an hour or so.

And as anyone would be, I was on a “get me out of this mess, migration, dedicated server, VPS ? Whatever…I don’t care..make it quick!” mode.

If you wanted to know the details, I was on hostgator, which I think is a very good hosting solution for shared hosting. But they couldn’t stand the memory usage problems on my blog.

Interestingly, Wordpress blogs are not just about hard disk capacities and bandwidth. Wordpress blogs don’t take up too much hard disk space unless you are hosting large files like video and audio. And you don’t need bandwidth either unless you’re streaming video/audio. (Courtesy Wendy)

So it’s just about Memory Usage. Hostgator guys told me that DSB uses more than 50% of their shared hosting memory resources, which is what forced them to suspend the account. Normally, they allow only upto 20% resource usage.

Why would there be a heavy memory usage for Wordpress blogs?

Plugins combined with any burst of traffic. It doesn’t matter if you have bandwidth or hard disk space. Incidentally, there might be plugins installed on your wordpress blog that might be wrongly coded or takes up lot of memory to run when put under high traffic conditions.

I couldn’t find the exact working pattern or memory usage for every plugin I use but comparing to last times rush there were a few plugins that I selectively activated, and it made me to guess that probably the “Related posts” plugin or the “Random posts” or the “Related RSS posts” plugin might have caused this. But seriously, I don’t have any metrics to show this, just a guess. These plugins were deactivated soon after the first crash and the second crash happened soon after I activated them(combined with SU traffic).

Reliable Digg proof / Stumble proof hosting solutions – Who’s the best ?

So now, I started looking for the next best option, migrating to a reliable host who could support me with a good  digg proof server with good memory and built for Wordpress technical specs.

Came across lot of discussion on the net, many of them were junk, but some of them really good, like this one. Clearly, there were already lot of people looking for digg proof hosting plans as they had a similar traffic outburst form the social media. And while looking for the best digg proof host, I guess these specs looked fine.

- Dedicated Servers with a strong backbone
- Wordpress supported host with Cpanel (To make easy installations)
- Unlimited subdomains, databases (In case you were interested in niche sites)
- Lots of memory…something like 2-4 GB sounds good. (keeping in mind scalability) 
- Excellent tech support ( I mean a sensible guy who would rise to challenges, not a “non-usable” techno encyclopedia.)
- Enough hard disk space
- Good enough bandwidth

These are the candidates in front of me.

1. Rackspace 
   The goods – Excellent support with dedicated server managers, high quality servers and facilities that were quite a lot more than what I needed.
   The bads – Expensive. you got to pay more for the excellent service.
   Cost – Dedicated server with 1 Server, Linux OS, Firewall – $383 per month.
2. Media Layer
   Some threads in the discussion boards had great reviews about these guys, so I checked them out.
   The Goods – Great reviews, Great price, Less clients
   The Bads – Not very popular
3. Media Temple
   The goods – Very popular, Excellent reviews, Scalability, Reasonable price
   The bads – I dunno yet.
   Cost – $150 per month
4. Dream Host
   The goods – Popular and good with shared hosting plans…Dedicated uhhmm…
   The bads – Popular only with the share hosting.

Am looking for more suggestions. In fact, the guys from Media Layer gave me custom offers and even though they don’t have a clientele to flash off, they came off very well. Very supportive with quick turnarounds and suggestions that helped me – one of the good things of being a hosting company who is selective with their clients.