While the addictive and increasingly popular blogshares site is not really suffering from a true slashdot effect (a spike in traffic due to publicity of some sort), it does appear to be groaning under the weight of its popularity.

Over the last day, a few hits have come up with the following results:

• Server down but box still pingable
• mySQL “too many connections” error (another Slashdot legacy … mySQL trying to run large sites….)
• Server down/box unpingable (current state, as I type this)

While I think the site is great, in the “Internet meme” sort of way (remember “hotornot.com”?), it’s suffering from two main problems:

• It basically seems to be a labor of love, and — while well done — doesn’t have the hardware it needs behind it. Could be unoptimized queries and so on, as well. Tough to do a perfect job with one person (or small group).
• It’s getting way popular. This site is going to have to change its hosting option if the traffic keeps up.

But always cool to see a new concept out there, and this one really is well done, both from the concept through the details (how to pick “shares” and so on) through the look and feel. Outside of stability and some little things I find awkward or just plain problematic, it rocks. I wish I could do something as complex as well.

Hell, I wish I could do something trivial as well.