As Hurricane Harvey battered Texas, millions of people hit the Web searching for information about the storm. For a small website called Space City Weather, the storm led to a huge surge — not in floodwater but in traffic. On a normal day, the site is lucky to get 10,000 page views, but during the storm, it served 1.1 million views in just one twenty-four-hour period and more than 4.3 million for the week.
During that time, Ars Technica’s Lee Hutchinson was hosting the site on his private Web server. He has posted a very detailed look at the software, hardware, configuration and optimization decisions that made it possible for the site to stay online through the storm. The lessons he learned offer good advice to any website owner dealing with a huge traffic increase.
The original home of HTML tutorials. HTMLGoodies is a website dedicated to publishing tutorials that cover every aspect of being a web developer. We cover programming and web development tutorials on languages and technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. In addition, our articles cover web frameworks like Angular and React.JS, as well as popular Content Management Systems (CMS) that include WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. Website development platforms like Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix are also featured. Topics related to solid web design and Internet Marketing also find a home on HTMLGoodies, as we discuss UX/UI Design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and web dev best practices.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2026 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
