"How 500 HN users crashed my 2GB server in 60 seconds – postmortem

5 hours ago

Solo developer launched Peakd, a community-powered ranking platform for products and services, at 2am UK time.
Site received 500 unique visitors within an hour, causing server collapse due to lack of caching and database connection pool exhaustion.
Fixed issues live by implementing Redis caching, using Incremental Static Regeneration, and upgrading server capacity.
Key lessons included caching for anonymous users, the inability to simulate production traffic locally, and the importance of launch timing.
Product feedback revealed discoverability issues with existing features like per-attribute ratings and audience filtering.

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