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Life & fun · August 25, 2013

DT

Don't get slashdotted when your link hits the HN front page

I'm sick and tired of clicking interesting links on the HN front page, only to get a spinning loader and waiting 10+ seconds for nothing. I'm not going to take the time to find the Google cache for your site, so if you want me to read what you wrote, please consider doing at least the bare minimum to keep your site running when I visit: 1. Use a static page cache / serve static HTML. Either use something like Varnish, or if you don't want to configure it or you're on a shared host, use one of the following extensions/techniques to statically cache pages: - Wordpress:…

Don't get slashdotted when your link hits the HN front page launched on August 25, 2013 with 12 votes, #68 of 475 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.

Alternativestop 14% of August 2013

In plain words

This is a guide for website owners addressing the problem of slow page loads when links gain popularity on Hacker News. It provides practical recommendations for improving server performance during traffic spikes, including implementing static page caching through tools like Varnish or platform-specific plugins for WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Rails. The guide targets developers and site maintainers who want to ensure their content remains accessible when it receives sudden high traffic.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

I'm sick and tired of clicking interesting links on the HN front page, only to get a spinning loader and waiting 10+ seconds for nothing. I'm not going to take the time to find the Google cache for your site, so if you want me to read what you wrote, please consider doing at least the bare minimum to keep your site…

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