--- title: How I Survived the Front Page of Hacker News Without... description: A blog post recounts how a personal site hit #16 on Hacker News, receiving a 5,000% traffic spike (194,000 requests in a day) without crashing, thanks to... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-survived-the-front-page-of-hacker-news-without-crashing-my-server-kfny8vwnl twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How I Survived the Front Page of Hacker News Without Crashing My Server | daily.dev og:description: A blog post recounts how a personal site hit #16 on Hacker News, receiving a 5,000% traffic spike (194,000 requests in a day) without crashing, thanks to... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-survived-the-front-page-of-hacker-news-without-crashing-my-server-kfny8vwnl og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/kFNy8vwNl.png og:image:alt: How I Survived the Front Page of Hacker News Without Crashing My Server og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How I Survived the Front Page of Hacker News Without Crashing My Server **[Daniel Petrica](https://daily.dev/sources/danielpetrica)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A blog post recounts how a personal site hit #16 on Hacker News, receiving a 5,000% traffic spike (194,000 requests in a day) without crashing, thanks to caching preparation done months earlier. The setup uses Cloudflare as a proxy with 'cache everything' rules (94% of requests served from cache), Ghost CMS configured with tuned Cache-Control headers, and a Docker Compose + Traefik reverse proxy stack running ~24 self-hosted services on a single 4-core ARM server. The piece ends with a pitch for the author's freelance DevOps and monitoring consulting services. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What Ghost CMS environment variables control cache header max-age settings? Ghost's Docker Compose .env file supports caching__contentApi__maxAge, caching__frontend__maxAge, and caching__robotstxt__maxAge, which set Cache-Control max-age values for the content API, frontend pages, and robots.txt respectively. Setting these (e.g., to 60 seconds for content/frontend and 36000 for robots.txt) lets a CDN like Cloudflare cache responses effectively during traffic spikes. _daily.dev surfaces practical caching configs like this for developers tuning self-hosted CMS setups._ ### How much of my traffic can Cloudflare's cache-everything rule offload during a viral traffic spike? With a Cloudflare 'cache everything' page rule applied to all routes except the admin portal, one self-hosted Ghost CMS blog had 94% of requests served directly from Cloudflare's edge cache during a Hacker News front-page spike that generated 194,000 requests in a single day, keeping the origin server responsive throughout. _anyone bracing for a traffic surge can compare caching strategies like this one on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Finally, the Rails Blog Runs on Rails](https://daily.dev/posts/finally-the-rails-blog-runs-on-rails-1rapetyso) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How We Cached Laravel News at the Edge with Fast Laravel](https://daily.dev/posts/how-we-cached-laravel-news-at-the-edge-with-fast-laravel-rbgw6huba) · Laravel News · 5 upvotes · 0 comments - [Just another \(Black\) Friday](https://daily.dev/posts/just-another-black-friday-stcit5nja) · Vercel · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Orange Site Vanity](https://daily.dev/posts/orange-site-vanity-jtlcikewk) · Farid Zakaria’s Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [I'm 12. This morning I fought two hosting providers. My app survived both.](https://daily.dev/posts/i-m-12-this-morning-i-fought-two-hosting-providers-my-app-survived-both--idkuxfs1o) · DEV · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#docker](https://daily.dev/tags/docker), [#cloudflare](https://daily.dev/tags/cloudflare) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-survived-the-front-page-of-hacker-news-without-crashing-my-server-kfny8vwnl) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How I Survived the Front Page of Hacker News Without Crashing My Server","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-survived-the-front-page-of-hacker-news-without-crashing-my-server-kfny8vwnl","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-survived-the-front-page-of-hacker-news-without-crashing-my-server-kfny8vwnl"},"datePublished":"2026-09-29T12:32:29.771Z","dateModified":"2026-09-29T12:33:04.550Z","description":"A blog post recounts how a personal site hit #16 on Hacker News, receiving a 5,000% traffic spike (194,000 requests in a day) without crashing, thanks to...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/bba0278ee9ea80cda6ddf740e7be29d1?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/bba0278ee9ea80cda6ddf740e7be29d1?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Daniel Petrica","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Daniel Petrica","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--jkfwlnJz--/f_auto,q_auto/v1774964393/logos/danielpetrica?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/danielpetrica"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-survived-the-front-page-of-hacker-news-without-crashing-my-server-kfny8vwnl","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"docker,cloudflare","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Daniel Petrica","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/danielpetrica"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"How I Survived the Front Page of Hacker News Without Crashing My Server"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-survived-the-front-page-of-hacker-news-without-crashing-my-server-kfny8vwnl#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What Ghost CMS environment variables control cache header max-age settings?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Ghost's Docker Compose .env file supports caching__contentApi__maxAge, caching__frontend__maxAge, and caching__robotstxt__maxAge, which set Cache-Control max-age values for the content API, frontend pages, and robots.txt respectively. 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