How to Optimize Hosting for High-Traffic Websites

Best Practices for Website Caching & Resource Allocation

It’s every business owner’s dream: the company you’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into is finally getting the attention it deserves. More and more clients are using your website to interact with your company, and the orders for your services and products are flooding in.

And then your website crashes.

There are ways to better optimize hosting before this happens, like reviewing your website’s code and plugins, and making sure they’re up to date. It’s also a good idea to cache your website’s resources so prevent server overload.

There are also some third party options you may want to consider, like hiring a content delivery network (CDN) or a Waiting Room service, so that the impact of high traffic on your website’s performance is minimal.

Learn more: Complete Guide to Web Hosting

Optimize Your Website

If you want your high-traffic website to perform well, you’ll first want to optimize your website on the back end to make it easier on the server.

1. Review your website. Take the time to review your site’s code, plugins, and database queries. You want to look for any resource-intensive elements and either optimize or remove them. A good example of this is unoptimized high-resolution photos or embedded videos with autoplay. If you want to keep media like this on your site, make sure to compress the images and files to reduce data transfer. Other culprits may include third-party plugins, large JavaScript files, infinite loop CSS animations, and interactive elements. Basically anything that causes high CPU usage should be reviewed and, if necessary, eliminated.
2. Update website software. Once you’ve eliminated the resource-intensive elements from your site, make sure all of your website’s software is up to date, including plugins, themes, and your Content Management System (CMS).
3. Optimize your website database. If you haven’t already, implement indexing for faster data retrieval. It’s also a good idea to take a look at your site’s SQL queries and see if there is anything you can better optimize there, too.

Cache Your Website’s Resources

Simply put, when you cache your website’s resources, you’re putting them in a temporary location for storage so that your website can deliver content more quickly.

If you aren’t web caching your high traffic website, the server hosting your site may not be able to handle the traffic on its own. When a server is overwhelmed, your website may slow down significantly or crash, leading to poor user experience and potential revenue loss.

There are several different ways to cache your website’s resources. Essentially, the difference between these options is the location where your website’s resources are stored.

Browser Cache: This is ideal for high-traffic sites because rather than redownloading the files to the website every time it’s loaded, the files are stored locally in the user’s browser instead. Having a browser cache set up can significantly reduce the server load and prevent your website from slowing down.

Server-Side Cache: This cache is stored in the web server’s RAM. A server-side cache saves frequently requested data (like database query results or HTML pages) so that the data is ready to be delivered immediately. If the data is not saved in the server-side cache, your website’s server will process the request, but the cache will immediately store the result for the next time the request is made.

CDN (Content Delivery Network) Cache: A CDN is a common solution for high traffic websites. This type of cache sends the cached data to multiple servers in a network so that the server load is spread out, preventing one server from becoming overloaded with the website’s data.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

As mentioned above, a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a third party that stores your website data on multiple servers in different geographical locations, instead of just one. Think of it like hiring a full legal team rather than just one attorney: because the load is divided evenly, the servers are able to split up the task and carry the load together.

When any request is made on your website by a user, a CDN will deliver the requested website content from the server that is closest to the location of the user. Providing cached data from the closest server, rather than origin server, decreases the distance the data has to travel and increases load times.

Like everything, there are pros and cons to using a CDN. It may not be the right choice for all high-traffic websites, but it does provide features that are useful for some.

There are multiple CDN service providers to choose from, like Akamai, Cloudflare, and CloudFront. Every website is different, so make sure to choose one that will work best with your particular needs.

Worried about your website’s security? Check out our guide on How Secure Hosting Protects Your Site.

Use a Waiting Room

Waiting Rooms are a common tool used to manage spikes in high traffic. Basically, a Waiting Room creates a queue of users when your website’s capacity is full, keeping them on a holding page and allowing them onto the site when a spot has opened up.

When you use a Waiting Room, you’ll be able to set limits on how many active users are on the site and how many hits per minute your website gets. This allows you to control the flow of traffic to your site and avoid overloading the server.

A Waiting Room directs users to a branded holding page. This page should update the user on their place in the queue and an estimate for how long they will need to wait. This keeps the user engaged and improves your website’s bounce rate. If you’ve ever purchased concert ticket online, odds are you’ve experienced a waiting room like this. Ticketmaster uses them often as a way of preventing their site from crashing when they release concert tickets.

A good Waiting Room service will also include the tools to keep bots from overloading your site and giving users fair access to the product they are waiting for.

Web Hosting with Northwest Registered Agent

At Northwest, we offer open-source web hosting with flexible plans, privacy protection, and human help. Take advantage of our super-fast load times, reliable hosting, and access to up-to-date WordPress features. And best part? You can bring your own site or build it here, with us.

All of our plans include 1 free domain, SSL certificate, and Domain Privacy.

Northwest offer more than just a place to host your website. We specialize in complete Business Identity services. If you form your business with Northwest, you get web hosting, but you also get a domain, a matching email, phone number, and help from real people. All for free.