Is Your Website Ready for Success?

It seems like a simple enough question… Are you ready for your website to become successful? Most people would answer, “Yes, of course!” Increased success equates to increased profits and an improved lifestyle. What many people don’t realize is that increased success online equates to a change in the needs of your website. David Icke experienced this very issue on Sunday as his website began to experience intermittent downtime due to a spike in traffic and the inability of his hosting plan to accommodate it.

How Much Traffic Can Your Website Handle?

While some website owners and operators are well aware of the fact that their sites can’t handle unlimited traffic, others are not. Some website owners assume that because their web hosting plan offers “unlimited” bandwidth, they are ready for increased traffic to their website no matter how much traffic they begin to receive. The truth is that while your bandwidth usage may not be limited, if you’re using a shared server, other things likely are (such as CPU usage) to ensure that you aren’t taking up all of the server’s resources. Even if your web host does not place limits on the amount of bandwidth or visitors your site receives, if your site begins to experience more visitors and bandwidth usage than the server can handle, your site is going to experience downtime and performance issues.

This is exactly what happened to David Icke’s website this weekend. As his website was going up and down, he tweeted to the public, “Apologies for the website being up and down today.” Mr. Icke also posted an apology on his site once it was back up and running, stating “Apologies for the website being up and down today - this has been caused by a massive increase in visitor traffic and we are embarking on an upgrade to cope.”

Of course no website owner would complain about such a huge increase in visitors and traffic – but what if your site isn’t ready to handle it? As Mr. Icke found out, it means that your website goes down and your visitors can’t access your pages.

Monitor Your Traffic and Upgrade before Problems Occur

If you want to avoid your website going down just when things are getting good, it’s important to monitor your website’s traffic. If you notice a significant spike in traffic, it may be time to look into a dedicated server. It’s best to do this before your site overloads rather than during or after. When your site begins experiencing the type of success you have been dreaming of, don’t assume your current hosting plan is adequate just because the hosting company promises you “unlimited” bandwidth. If you’re on a shared server, nothing is really unlimited. As your website begins to grow, you need to move from a shared server to a dedicated server and, at some point, you may even need to upgrade your dedicated server if your site’s growth continues.

While it’s true that dedicated server hosting is more expensive than hosting on a shared server, it’s a necessary investment. If you don’t invest in dedicated hosting, your site is going to experience frequent downtime and outages that will most definitely interfere with the level of your site’s success and how fast you can grow.