The Reddit Effect

You may have noticed that Opus was running more slowly than usual over the last day or so. The reason is that someone posted a link to this entry on Reddit, a site where users can post and discuss links to other websites, blog entries — which resulted in traffic to Opus skyrocketing by over 300%.

Mind you, I’m not complaining about the extra traffic, and hopefully some of those folks stuck around for awhile to read other articles on Opus, but this poor little website was definitely creeping along there for awhile. However, it looks like the storm has passed for the most part and things should be back to normal.

I have no idea if something like this will happen again, but I’m in the process of revamping Opus’ design and underlying ExpressionEngine structure, with one of the primary areas of focus being overall site performance and efficiency. So hopefully next time — if there is a next time — won’t have quite as big an impact.