I wrote and article that got to the front page, once (https://foorious.com/articles/life-without-a-cell-phone/ https://foorious.com/articles/life-without-a-cell

I wrote and article that got to the front page, once (https://foorious.com/articles/life-without-a-cell-phone/ https://foorious.com/articles/life-without-a-cell-phone/). I got about 50,000 visits within 4 days: 30,000 on day 1, 10,000 the second day, and then 5,000 on day 3 and 4. Also interesting that the "story" got picked up by a lot of other magazines—which I guess follow HN to hunt for news—and they even talked about it on podcasts and radio shows. If it was some kind of service, I guess I would've gotten something out of it. As for your question, mine was (and is) a regular WordPress site, although on a dedicated VPS. At its peak of 300 people at the same time browsing the site, I didn't notice any difference from a performance point of view/server usage. Of course, it all depends on the service. An untested app getting thousands of users might have problems, WordPress is pretty battle-tested.