Hi. I want to host a torrent search engine (not a torrent site with actual torrents hosted, only a search engine). It has to be really fast. I have a few questions? What hosting is required for this site to be lightning fast? Most of it is due to the coding of the site but how much of it is reliant of the server? Any suggestions? Also, is it better to start small and upgrade as more visitors come? Or is it just better to get a big server?
If you want something really fast I'd recomend dedicated server. A nice top notch machine with some wide bandwidth and you'll never worry about speed Definatelly not a shared server where you hope others use little resources so your site will run fast... I'ts probably better to start small and upgrade with the growth of the site. The best and most efficient thing to do is to upgrade just when the site needs it. If you can manage to upgrade just before the next wave of new traffic it'll be best for you - your site will run fast and you will pay as little as possible, but most of the time thats too hard to acomplish. So, always be one step ahead of the usage - provide a slightly better hosting than needed and you won't be in trouble if suddenly the traffic go up. All in one sentance - it's always better to have the best services installed but they cost more, the most cost-efficient solution is to keep up to date with you site's needs So it all depends on the traffic and usage you expect to have.
Slow script runs slowly on a fast host, that's the deal. 10,000 of visitors invoking PHP to be started few times a minute, on a slow server and without caching.. imagine this.
well it won't be 10K at first, probably few hundred. Will a shared / semi-ded / or virtual ded do at first? Of course, I know I"d have to eventually go dedicated. How much bandwidth would I need as a guideline?