Ask HN: How do you prevent your site from crashing from too much traffic?

  1. Static files whenever possible
  2. Caches wherever possible
  3. Database indexes

These optimizations tend to pay off the most and probably require the least amount of expertise.

A good IDS system that prevents bots and attackers from consuming resources can also be helpful.

Static files always help, especially if your using something like Nginx to serve them.

Cache is also great, I make use of MemCache and Varnish on most of my applications.

Depends on the site.. what backend are you using?

I don't market it :P