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# Inadvertently Load-Testing This Site
- URL: https://birchtree.me/blog/inadvertently-load-testing-this-site/
- Published: 2020-10-28T18:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2020-10-28T18:00:00.000Z
- Author: Matt Birchler
- Tags: meta, #Import 2023-06-01 22:41, #Import 2025-03-29 19:29

Yesterday I wrote [an article](https://birchtree.me/blog/a-guy-walks-into-an-apple-store/) that attempted to capture the feelings I've seen from a lot of people about the mixed messages related to the environment with the new iPhone 12 line and accessories. I wrote it in like 5 minutes, thought it was pretty good, and posted it without a second thought.

While there are certainly better ways to track website performance, I'm not using any of them, so what I have are CPU usage logs from the past 24 hours on this server. This site runs on [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?ref=birchtree.me) and is self-hosted from a "droplet" with [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/?ref=birchtree.me). Generally, my CPU is pretty calm, hovering well below 10% utilization most of the time.

However, that CPU usage scales up generally linearly with usage, so the more traffic I get, I would expect to get a proportionally similar rise in CPU usage.

Yesterday, I got to find out how true that was.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/31/25312b2a-2d5b-4d01-ba92-e6755efc202c/content/images/2020/10/24hours.png)

You can see three separate bumps, each more substantial than the last.

A little after 10am my time, [The Loop](https://www.loopinsight.com/2020/10/27/a-guy-walks-into-an-apple-store/?ref=birchtree.me) linked to the post, and I saw a modest jump in usage. A few hours later, [John Gruber](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/10/27/birchler-walks-into-an-apple-store?ref=birchtree.me) linked to the post as well, and there was a bigger spike. Then things got out of control when it hit the front page of [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24911413&ref=birchtree.me). As you can see from the chart, that's where we hit the "uh oh" point, as CPU usage hit 100% and stayed close to that for the better part of an hour. From what I could tell, the site never crashed, but some people during that period may have seen page load times noticeably more than the 1 second I would normally expect for the post with no images.

At the peak, I was seeing over 700 simultaneous users on the site, which is unusual, to say the least. Long story short, I had about the same number of people visit the site yesterday as had been here in the first 26 days of October combined.

## Takeaway

I ought to figure out a better way to cache the site since I got right up to the edge of things falling apart this time. That said, this happens so rarely that unless it's simple and free, I will likely just risk it and not do anything.

That may not be the most satisfying takeaway, but frankly I think it's the most practical.