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Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect

maxmasnick.com

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Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect

#2
I wrote kind of a hybrid static blog setup the other day[1]. You write posts in markdown, check them in along side the app, and then push to Heroku or wherever else you want to host it. It's just a little Sinatra app, no database or anything.

[1]: http://bugsplat.info/2011-12-14-yet-another-not-very-static-...

Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect

#4

I find it funny (and perhaps ironic!) that people would want their thoughts kept in some obscure row and obscure column of a remote SQL database. But perhaps it is better than not storing and sharing your thoughts at all! In any case...Merry Christmas HN!

How is that ironic? Thoughts have to be stored somewhere and databases happen to be really good at storing things.

Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect

#5
It's a shame that several years after the term "slashdot effect" was coined, self-hosted personal blogs are still vulnerable to this easily preventable phenomenon. The companies that host the majority of the world's small web sites, such as BlueHost, DreamHost, and (heavens forbid) GoDaddy, have not made any innovations in this department. Most VPS's are no different.

NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is really good at handling traffic spikes, for both static and dynamic sites. It combines the convenience of shared hosting with the scalability of cloud computing. You just need to insert more coins when you run out of your prepaid traffic.

Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect

#6
Save dynamic page as html from browser.

Upload to server as html.

Add.htaccess rule to redirect old dynamic page to static page. (when traffic dies, remove rule)

Or if you are running WordPress, just install wp-super-cache and when a traffic spike happens, click the "lockdown" button.

Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect

#7

I find it funny (and perhaps ironic!) that people would want their thoughts kept in some obscure row and obscure column of a remote SQL database. But perhaps it is better than not storing and sharing your thoughts at all! In any case...Merry Christmas HN!

I don't think that's really irony...how is that worse then some obscure file in some obscure server somewhere? Or some obscure block of memory in some obscure cloud somewhere?

Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect

#8
post #4

I find it funny (and perhaps ironic!) that people would want their thoughts kept in some obscure row and obscure column of a remote SQL database. But perhaps it is better than not storing and sharing your thoughts at all! In any case...Merry Christmas HN!

How is that ironic? Thoughts have to be stored somewhere and databases happen to be really good at storing things.

It is ironic because the real deep reason we share our thoughts is because we want them to stand out!

Databases are indeed good at storing millions and billions of things and they are designed for it.But no human being is individually capable of creating content that really justifies a "dynamic programming oriented query plan generation" each time someone wishes to access his thoughts!

tl;dr My argument is that static site generation for personal blogs is common sense!

Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect

#9

I find it funny (and perhaps ironic!) that people would want their thoughts kept in some obscure row and obscure column of a remote SQL database. But perhaps it is better than not storing and sharing your thoughts at all! In any case...Merry Christmas HN!

I don't think that's really irony...how is that worse then some obscure file in some obscure server somewhere? Or some obscure block of memory in some obscure cloud somewhere?

haha good point but thats why I prefer the Dropbox based approach where I just create a text file and put it in my dropbox folder!

Re: Bulletproof your blog – survive the Hacker News effect

#10
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that ironic? Thoughts have to be stored somewhere and databases happen to be really good at storing things.

It is ironic because the real deep reason we share our thoughts is because we want them to stand out! Databases are indeed good at storing millions and billions of things and they are designed for it.But no human being is individually capable of creating content that really justifies a "dynamic programming oriented query plan generation" each time someone wishes to access his thoughts! tl;dr My argument is that stati…

Sure. My counter-argument is that for multi-tenant hosting like tumblr where millions of people keep their personal blogs, keeping posts in a database is common sense because they're a known quantity. Backup strategies, optimization techniques, operations procedures are all well known and battle tested.

Also, creating content using a web-based editor that saves to a database is very easy for not-so-technical people to wrap their minds around. Static site generators? Not so much.

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