A caching plugin kept a site alive during a 50x traffic spike

A caching plugin kept a site alive during a 50x traffic spike

A reader's article got shared by a big account. Suddenly 5,000 people arrived in an hour instead of his usual 100. Normally his small server would have collapsed.

It didn't, because the week before he'd installed a caching plugin. Caching means saving a ready-made copy of each page, so the server hands out the copy instead of rebuilding the page for every visitor, like a bakery selling loaves already on the shelf.

The difference:
— Without caching, his server builds the page 5,000 times.
— With caching, it builds it once and serves the saved copy 5,000 times.

The site stayed fast and never went down.

In plain words: caching serves pre-made pages, so your site handles big crowds without breaking a sweat.