I know that websites with complexed databases require complexed infrastructure once they get millions of hits daily/monthly. Does a blog created from only HTML and gif/jpeg also require a server farm when it gets big or is increasing bandwidth the only issue? Thanks in advance, - DigiP
All the blogs I've ever come across do use databases, although the common ones are probably well optimised so as not to need too much processing power. Having said that, even if you just have hard-coded static HTML pages, millions of hits a day will probably mean you will need multiple servers - but of course if you get millions of hits a day you should be able to easily afford them .
Ok, but at most I would only need a couple of dedicated servers (which I can rent from server hosts) for a HTML static page right? I remembered reading how the drugdereport.com only costed around 4k a month for the server hosts as oppose to digg.com or plentyoffish.com which require server farms ( which would require me to host in a data center, etc.) and lots of funding. Is this a correct assessment? -DigiP
Static html pages or php pages which include other static items require a lot less server than databased sites. That is the best answer I get when I post a question like yours places where hosting people hang out. Images of couse add to the load. Pure text takes very little of anything.
There are few things that would help - hosting images on different server - using clustered mysql system - installing cache system likes memcache About your first question: no one can answer if a html site only can run on one server, or it requires a server farm. It really depends on how busy it is. But in that case, if it's really busy, you can use a load-balancing system, to share the load between servers
Is this question regarding your own site? You can get millions of visitors a day before you'll need a server farm with or without databases + by that time you'll have so much cash you can buy a whole field of server farms!
Are you sure about that? If that is the case, how come vbullentin boards are struggling on a dedicated server with around 500-1000 concurrent users? Thanks in advance, - DigiP
We host for some vBulletin forums with 500+ users at once (15 minutes session time) on one dedicated server, but it's a big one. 1000 concurrent users is totally different. Also, that stats is not always correctly. If I am not wrong, default vBulletin session time is 24 hours, so that number can be the number of visitors in 24hours, not at the same time
No, With blogs the data stream is all read (except for comments).. You can install one of several caching plugins/scripts available (for wordpress at least).. They will cause the code to generate a static file which will only be updated once an hour, or however often you set it to update. You should be able to easily receive millions of hits (in one day) on a blog with a single server. (i run an alexa < 1000 globally site which receives 8 million page views a day (forum))