The Wardman Wire

Slashdotting: The phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic.

The name comes from the technology and news website Slashdot, which has about 5.5 million users per month, and encourages its readers to read the articles linked to in the summary. Sometimes the web site’s server is unable to cope with the level of traffic, and the site becomes unresponsive: the site is said to be “slashdotted”.

Harry-Pottered

On Monday I posted part of a Test Match Special “View from the Boundary” interview with the Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe - who happened to be spending his 18th Birthday at a Cricket Test Match.

This turned out to be an interesting experience. The article made it onto various fansites and onto Myspace. This generated several thousand visitors.

Bizarrely, the post has turned into something of a Daniel Radcliffe birthday shrine. At the time I am writing this article, there are far there are 231 comments on the post, including visitors from Hong King, Thailand and Iran - and they continue to be added from time to time. I feel like someone who’s gatepost is being used as a shrine after a road accident.

There was even a response from the wizard himself (apparently, although I think the real one can spell).

Statistics

According to my stats, I have received some thousands of visitors referred from more than 120 Harry Potter fan sites and journals.

Approxmately 2500 people listened to the 15-20 minute interview. At peak, there was a visitor arriving every 7 or 8 seconds. This is not a problem if they access a web page, but if they are all staying to listen to a 20 minute 20Mb interview, then that is 100 simultaneous visitors.

The normal bandwidth for this website is about 300-400Mb per day. On Monday this week that leaped to just under 20Gb, before settling down a little as the week progressed.

Are there any Costs and Benefits

Costs

The cost of getting this sudden surge of visits is that your site may slow down, or even die.

In this case we slowed down significantly, but stayed online throughout. The screenshot above is from Alexa. Usually the site sits at about the 80% point, rather than the current 93%.

If you have the wrong hosting package, you may get hit with excess bandwidth charges, or your account suspended.

Benefits

There are a few benefits:

• In this case my hosting setup received a thorough stress-test and survived surprisingly well.
• I’ve received a few links back - which always helps with profile and publicity.
• The extra traffic will help me pass some of the tests for advertising networks which would consider the blog too small otherwise.
• The particular article will - in due course - receive a reasonable rating in search engines. It may be that I will be able to sell an advert on the particular blog article. This is what has happened with a previous post I did about the Sexual Orientation Regulations back in April.

List of Dan Radcliffe Fan Sites

For Dan Radcliffe fans, this is a list of the sites that have sent me larger numbers of referrals:

http://www.danradcliffe.com
http://danradcliffe.com
http://www.danradcliffe.co.uk
http://www.harrypottertrio.com
http://danradcliffe.co.uk
http://harrypottertrio.com
http://danielradcliffenc-17.com
http://www.danielradcliffe.it
http://www.danielradcliffe.de
http://dan-radcliffe.net
http://danradclif.exblog.jp
http://danradcliffe.com.
http://danradcliffe.fr
http://theitaliandanielradcliffefanforum.forumcommunity.net
http://www.dan-radcliffe.net
http://www.danradcliffe.fr
http://www.danradcliffe.com.

Tags: dan radcliffe, daniel radcliffe, harry potter, interview, cricket, jonathon agnew, view from the boundary, Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince[tags]dan radcliffe, daniel radcliffe, harry potter, interview, cricket, jonathon agnew, view from the boundary, Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince[/tags]