TickleTown experiencing some growing pains

[Oblesklk]

There may be some in flight turbulence with the site over the next few weeks or so. Every month since we went live, we have basically doubled the amount of traffic we've produced every month. I figured it would top out last month, when we hit a high of over 69,000 hits in a day. I didn't think it would get too much higher than this.

I was at work this morning and nearly fell out of my chair when I saw how many hits we had on Sunday. Over 150,000 hits in one day. That is an absurd increase in traffic compared with where the site has been before.

To put in perspective, we had something like 1.5 million hits over the five year span that the site had in its infancy on the web. At this rate, however, we're looking at over 273 million hits over the same time period.

So what does this mean? I think we've outgrown our web host. We are currently in talks with them right now, and we'll see how those go. But if those fail, then just wanted to warn everyone that the page might be down for a week or so while we do some host shopping.

If anyone has any good suggestions for hosts, shoot me an email.

 

[sexypapi]

well i think in a way congrats are in order...right?

 

[Oblesklk]

Thanks

Getting lots of hits on the web is always a double edged sword. But I'm very happy so far with the site's progression.

 

[WallStreet]

It must be those Wall$treetTickling clips.

 

[Oblesklk]

Yea, I think it's a lot of factors. The TMF has certainly helped in much of the traffic. I don't think we've ever had quite this many focused, centralized ticklers in one spot before, and it does help in getting the word out quickly.

Plus, yes, in my opinion, there's been some of the highest quality contributions from a few generous folks in the community that have made the page really fun.

I just spoke with our web host, and they did agree to expand our bandwidth slightly, so I will need to monitor it very carefully in the coming weeks. But there may be a happy ending to all this after all. Maybe.

 

[tklr5150]

O-Man, you have only yourself to blame, what with all your quality material and widespread appeal. Let this be a lesson to you: tickling good, bandwith problems bad.

I'm afraid I don't know much in the way of solving the problems, but I too think some congrats are in order for achieving such popularity. Viva la Tickletown!

 

[Prime]

i was wondering if maybe the banners people are using off the tickletown site might have something to do with the increase in bandwidth. i always assumed that when your linked to something and post or someone else pulls up a thread with your post with the banner on it that it would use bandwidth on the site it was linked to...so if lots of people have the banner and many people are reading the threads would that matter....of coarse i did say i always assumed and we all know what that means...lol....sometimes i'm not to bright.

 

[Oblesklk]

They did a little bit, Prime. The first day they were implemented, they did pull about 33mb of bandwidth off the server which isn't much in the grand scheme of things. But that's a pretty damn good observation

lol, Thanks tklr5150. I've been toying with the idea of putting extremely low quality material on the page for awhile, and start posting political rants with no point, no evidence, and absolutely no coherence or relevance to anything real or made up...anything to drive off first time visitors.

This summer I will change the slogan of the site from "brought to you by people that love tickling" to something more like "get the hell off our property" Ya know, something friendly...for the children.

 

[tklr5150]

Personally, I find the Mrs. Dubose strategy of perching on the front porch in a rocker training a musket on passers-bye while cackling about your cats works wonders for keeping the whippersnappers away.

 

[Oblesklk]

Whipper snappers...hehehe

Well I don't have any guns around here, but I do have a two week old tub of cottage cheese, and a jar of slightly green (only slightly) mayonnaise that harkens back to the Reagen era in my fridge. That would be enough to scare off anyone

 

[U.N.Owen]

Mrs. Dubose is said to have a Confederate pistol, not a musket -- but hey, I'm just delighted to see people reading Harper Lee.

 

[tklr5150]

An oversight on my part. But I just like the word "musket"

O-man . . . . keep an eye on that mayonaisse. Sometimes after it turns on you, it TURNS on you - in that fun "what's-that-green-glob-holding-the-carving-knife?" sort of way.

I'd watch my back if I was you, O.