Dear Web Hosting Company,

There is a major issue in your industry that you may not be aware of and I’d like to take a few moments to tell you about so that you can do a better job serving my peers.

I know you do a great job (at least 99.9% which is no small feat!) but lately even big, established web hosts have been failing us in one particular area: Digg traffic.

Digg traffic or the “Digg phenominon” is where a site that normally attracts a couple hundred to a few thousand visits in a day spikes to thousands of visits per minute. Of course this effect isn’t limited to Digg. There are other sources of large traffic jumps (like other social bookmarking sites and the news media) but the Digg phenomenon is probably the best known and most often referred to on message boards and blogs.

To the untrained (and automated) eye this may appear to be a DOS attack, but it isn’t. It’s real traffic from real people coming to our sites to see something cool, interesting or useful.

We work hard to make this happen and it really sucks when our host lets us down.

Of course we are aware that you have policies that we agreed to when we set up the account where you are justified to drop the site when big traffic spikes occur and in extreme cases suspending or terminating our long-standing business relationship. When these things happen we can’t help but wonder if you are missing the point: as website owners we count on you to stand up for us.

After all, we need you and the services you provide. As more stories of dropped sites when that magic moment hits spread across the internet, expect future customers to ask about how you handle these situations.

And you better believe that as website owners, promoters, SEOs, SEMs, designers and marketers we do talk about which web hosting companies can handle a couple days of boom traffic and which ones can’t. We are taking names and sharing them on forums, blogs and through email. These conversations are happening daily. And we are the people on the front lines. We are the decision makers and influencers. We need to know we can count on you not only when the worst happens, but the best.

Conversly, being able to take a Digg-pounding may result in some positive publicity for you.

What we are asking for is:

• A clear policy on boom traffic
• You to know the difference between the Digg phenomenon and a DOS attack
• You to help us out when such an opportunity comes along

If you do these things and we can take advantage of these boom traffic situations it means our websites will be more successful and that we will need to upgrade our accounts (which means more money for you). If you won’t handle it we have to find hosts that can. You’ve been great to us so far, please see what you can do.

Sincerely,

Your web hosting clients

Next Article: Lessons of the Free Link Giveaway Previous Article: Is your website out of control? Redesign considerations