A lesson in optimization...

[Taoism]

A blog that Harry wrote prompted me to go look at what I think is the busiest phpBB board I have ever seen to see how it sits today....

What I saw absolutely blew me away.... They get over 700,000 posts a day now at the board. I looked at one thread that by itself has more than 640,000 replies. Over 60,000,000 total posts and counting on the whole board. At this rate they will be the #1 ranked message board at www.big-board.com within a couple more months (or sooner). They are currently ranked #4.

And what is it running? PHP and using MySQL as the backend database. If you want a good perspective on what the person who codes the site does to tune it (from a PHP, DB and hardware perspective), then read the link below.

I am attaching a couple of screenshots I took tonight. I am just stunned by how much that board is growing. 4 or 5 months ago they were at 200,000 posts/day.

Link to the tuning thread at phpBB.com

I am curious if anyone else has seen this kind of volume of activity on a site using PHP?


Cheers,
Keith.

[Tanus]

Not really, except for something like yahoo . I'd be interested to see the hardware specs of the servers, and what sort of load balancing they do. It's sites like this that make the debate about php being so inferior to java or .net in the enterprise market seem ridiculous. How much more traffic does a site need to handle before you can say that yes PHP can handle a site that large?

[Taoism]

I agree, and the thread I posted to phpbb.com does contain hardware specs (actually they are posted several times in the thread as he has evolved the hardware to keep up).

I think he is up to 5 servers now for the site (read the posts to be sure)...

Cheers,
Keith.

[Selkirk]

Great find, that thread. I think the link you wanted was http://www.big-boards.com/ (Site point is #301, BTW )

[mlemos]

Not really, except for something like yahoo . I'd be interested to see the hardware specs of the servers, and what sort of load balancing they do. It's sites like this that make the debate about php being so inferior to java or .net in the enterprise market seem ridiculous. How much more traffic does a site need to handle before you can say that yes PHP can handle a site that large?

What I think that is ridiculous is that many PHP developers do not understand that the difficulties of PHP having acceptance in the enterprise world do not really have much to do with scalability. Actually most enterprise enviroments do not have more than a few tens of users and only a few access their intranets simultaneously.

There are other issues like the absence of big companies marketing PHP and making it a credible solution, the lack of understanding on the part of a many PHP developers of the common enterprise environments that are mostly Windows based, lack of companies selling professional PHP products (not IDE or basic development tools, I mean software that companies can buy, most of the enterprise world does not accept that free and open source software is a good idea), etc...

Bottom line is that it is not like PHP is not ready for the enterprise, it is more like the PHP community is not ready for the enterprise.

[Andrew-J2000]

Off Topic:

I mean software that companies can buy, most of the enterprise world does not accept that free and open source software is a good idea), etc...

That seems to be changing.

[mlemos]

Off Topic:


That seems to be changing.

I am not sure what you mean that is changing. If you mean that the enterprise world is accepting more free software, I am not sure if that is a good thing.

If the companies believe more in commercial software and so they are willing to pay for it instead of using free software, I think what needs to be changed is the mentality of the PHP developers that needs to learn how to sell their software instead of trying to push it as a freebie.

The enterprise world is about business and for most company managers, giving your work for free is unconceivable. They do not believe in miracles and when you try to push free software they do not trust you because they start thinking there are hidden costs that you are not telling them.

It does not matter if their conception is wrong or outdated. What matters is that if PHP developers want to succeed they need to push it as a commercial solution. That is a concept that the enterprise world has learned to accept as a reality.

[ghurtado]

I very much agree with Manuel's point here. I dont think its so much the technical capabilities of PHP being the barrier to entry, as much as is the lack of enterprise level, commercial, PHP-based applications.