Hi, I run a new humor blog ( Say No to Crack) that is starting to become popular (average 5,000 UVs per day, spikes to 30,000). I'm using a shared host and caching everything, but my users have complained that they've been getting some 404 errors (I've never seen it though). My bandwidth usage is only ~40GB of my alotted 2,000 GB, and my CPU usage is almost always below 1% (20% is max they allow). Do I need to start thinking about upgrading, or was this just a fluke? Thanks, Anita
It might have been a CPU spike not from your account but from someone else's which led to the server throwing 404. You can check the error logs to see what generated them. Another thing is to check how many concurrent connections to the database does your host allow. If it's time to upgrade I'd say that a small VPS will work just fine with your blog.
If it generates enough revenue (I think that much traffic already does), then invest in a small vps solely for this blog.
Haha - generates $0 revenue. I'm going for traffic right now ... I've found that with ads I increase my UVs by about 30% per month, with ads the increase is more like 5%. I'd rather get big faster, then put ads in later to start monetizing the site. Anita
Sometimes getting big requires some investments. When your blog starts to load slow (which I think will be soon) you'll have to upgrade. Put some text link advertising (2-3 links on a monthly basis should pay for the VPS).