Developers who have been working on large PHP-MySQL projects are requested to reply . I am not new to php nor to mysql, I have been developing huge applications and was very successful, but one thing I wanted to have suggestions about, before I start writing one more application. I have noticed that image hosts that require mysql or any other database on back-end, just end up with an error "Too many connections", even if your script is closing the connections, using persistant and/or non-persistant connections, server is caching pages on user-end. Such thing happens when a flood of hits made to server. Solution for this problem is costly, you need separate mysql server. What I had in mind is writing a brand new image host that will work with file system. Keeping in mind the huge traffic sites. So, no database connections and no separate server. But problem with files is, we cannot create queue, if there is one (that I wrote), requires cron job on back-end. Secondly search that eats up CPU, for this we can integrate google search, and allow tags with images. SQLite can be suggested. PLUS POINTS: 1. Very low cost server can run it 2. No installation or configuration headech 3. Accessing local file is much much more faster than establishing database connections. And if we use compression reading/writing it will turn more faster. 4. We can prevent data corruption. 5. We can backup data in single ZIP / RAR / GZ / BZ2 file 6. It will be specific to Linux / Unix servers running Apache so no need to worry about data files security. WHAT I WANT YOU TO SUGGEST IS: a. Is it really good idea developing an image host with files for large sites? b. What features must be in a minimal or moderate level imagehost script, and please suggest for huge one too. (I wrote a huge imagehost called imageox.com and sold it so review it first for features) c. Since the plan is for large scale sites, so no bandwidth monitoring or recording of hits. Features I had in mind 1. user login registration and visitors' uploading too 2. Registered users maintain galleries and can style them 3. Registered users create Slideshows of their galleries 4. Addon-box for other sites to add image upload service 5. Multiple image uplaoding 6. Uploading from a url 7. designable Printing view of images 8. tags for galleries or images ? 9. global settings I will be waiting for kind responses. regards