My website is broken!

Don’t panic, Ch'marr and I are already aware and working on it. This isn’t the first time the hosting company has disabled it for using too much of their resources.

Let’s talk about Wordpress, though.

Wordpress is a blogging platform that can also be used to display webcomics and stuff. If you are a new webcomic creator, using Wordpress can look very appealing because it is so easy to set up. However, you should be aware that it is also pretty resource intensive. I think my website first got disabled around 5000 hits/day, then again at 10,000, and then again at a 20,000 spike. I’m rounding these numbers. In reality they were probably boring and unmemorable stuff like “11,503”.

Caching can mitigate this somewhat, but Wordpress really wasn’t built to handle this kind of traffic. Parts of the site that have to be regularly updated, like the comments, draw a lot of resources. When the website comes back up it will hopefully have a shiny new Disqus-powered comment section, which should help some.

This probably isn’t something you’re going to be thinking about when you’re starting a new webcomic and saying to yourself “I hope all 10 of my friends read this”, but you should nonetheless think ahead and realize if your software has limits. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble a year in the future!