Black Friday traffic spike crashed my $5 droplet—what now?

kat_fold

Moderator OP

Moderator

Joined:: May 2024
Posts:: 162
From:: Lisbon, PT

6mo ago · edited

#1

Hey folks, keeping this on-topic please. OP had a rough Black Friday and needs actionable advice, not pile-ons.

My girlfriend's handmade jewelry site (hosting: $5 droplet on RackNerd, 1GB RAM, shared CPU) got a surprise feature on some influencer's story. Traffic went 10x, MySQL got OOM-killed, site down for 6 hours during peak sales. She's upgrading the droplet but I'm wondering what else we should be doing before next spike.

Currently: WordPress + WooCommerce, no caching plugin, default MySQL config. Considering Redis but never set it up. Temporary CDN credits would be amazing if anyone's feeling generous.

~be kind or be gone~

pieter_rtm

Member

Joined:: Jul 2024
Posts:: 195
From:: Rotterdam, NL

6mo ago · edited

#2

Your stack is.

1GB RAM with WooCommerce is tight even at idle
MySQL default config eats 400MB+ before first query
No object cache = every page hit hits database

Redis will help but won't fix fundamentals. As said, enable query cache first, it's free. Move images to any CDN, even free tier. Then resize droplet to 2GB minimum. Numbers don't lie.

Containers before it was cool

beto60

Member

Joined:: Jun 2024
Posts:: 95
From:: Curitiba, Brazil

6mo ago · edited

#3

Caramba! 10x traffic and no caching, nossa! Your girlfriend is brave, kkkk

I had same problem with my cousin's site, we put cloudflare (free) and wp rocket, helped a lot. But 1GB is not not enough for woocommerce, no way no way. Upgrade first, then cache, then breathe easy. Warm hugs to her!

Post a reply