After weeks of running okay (more or less), we reached some kind of threshold yesterday and Blogger wasn't keeping up with the load. Everything was breaking. I spent tonight trying to tweak things so they'll run better today. (Actually, I'm still doing some database chores, so things are a bit sluggish right now, but it's early, so there's not much load.) Cross your toes.
On the brighter side, I've been getting lots of development done on a new code base that will greatly improve upon things -- not just in scalability and reliability but options and features and distributability. Anyway, that's why a lot of non-showstopper things have not been getting addressed for a long time. It's been very tough to move forward while handle the current load. Paradoxically, it's easier to start from scratch in a lot of ways.
