A few weeks ago one of our Sitecore clients had a piece of content hit the front page of Reddit. Too often I see sites get an explosion of traffic, usually unexpected, and the site can’t handle the sudden spike in visitors. Fortunately, this client site’s architecture was able to handle the influx of traffic without a problem.
If your site goes down when your page views shoot up, you’ve squandered a rare opportunity. First impressions are important, and a user whose first impression of your site is instability is a user that likely won’t return. There are things you can do to prepare. My post over at Velir’s blog goes into more detail.