9000 visitors a day averages about 0.1 visitor per second.<p>Let's say that the peak is 100 times more frequent than the average, so that would be about 10 visitors/second.<p>Being a systems developer, and not a web programmer, I work on software that handles tens of thousands of requests/sec. I don't understand why around 10 visitors/second would be a difficulty with semi-modern hardware. How many requests does that translate to?<p>This is a genuine question, can anyone explain what is it that takes so much work in handling a web request?
I feel like this would be a common mistake when getting caught up in the moment of completing a dev project. You're so anxious to launch the site/app that load balancing factors could be overlooked. This seems like it could be really detrimental as you're pretty much canning your first impression when your backend crashes. Anyone up for sharing their horror stories of launching before their backend could handle the traffic? I feel like it could provide for some good insight in regards to patience and thought when it comes to launching.
I love this traffic graph, looks very similar to past HN type analytic graphs ive seen.<p>I would say a big lesson people should learn from you and others is, use load balancers. At least if traffic spikes, you can add another server (provided you have an image sitting by waiting and your code doesnt mind being load balanced).