If your problem is CPU usage rather than bandwidth overage, consider switching from Apache to nginx. I found my LAMP WordPress blog (hosted on a small VPS and using W3 Total Cache) was having trouble with concurrent users - traffic spikes would make my CPU usage skyrocket.<p>I've since switched to nginx and the results have been great under moderate to high traffic, and without the use of any caching plugin.
What an excellent post, and easy enough for someone without tech experience to follow. This will definitely be forwarded to friends wanting to get into the more serious side of web publishing.
Great tips. The most useful one for me is to put images and script files on a subdomain.<p>Doesn't adding CSS and JavaScript inline hurt your google rank?
"A single-user client SHOULD NOT maintain more than 2 connections with any server or proxy". In reality, it is 6 in IE 8, 8 in FF 3.x, Safari and Opera
Moving to Xen-based VPS with fast connection from dedicated server. Big deal.<p>For me it looks much better to rent a dedicated server and divide it into several KVMs and resell them. =)