Do more visitors to a website which is built using PHP will affect the perforamnce or the load time for some users? if it is, how?
It does not matter if the site is using PHP or not. Too many visitors for a server or for the network to handle it would come to a crashing hault if not outright crash. So yes, it will effect users load time or even deny access all togeather. But again it does nat matter if you are using PHP, static HTML file or what have you. If you do not have the resources to support the traffic the system will crash under the weight.
One thing to add is that if your website’s code is poorly written/ optimised, it’ll grind to a halt sooner than if it’s correctly optimised.
Generally sites, once they get busy will start slowing down a little (as requests get queued), soon after that errors might start occurring as access to resources (db, file access etc.) start failing.
Does this mean we have to find a good host who can handle this kind of traffic? If yes, which one can you recommend guys…
On demand resource allocations. Like Amazons Cloud Hosting or Microsoft’s Windows Azure are both good in adapting to dynamic traffic.
It really depends on what kind of traffic you’re expecting.
If you’re building a site that will have a couple of hundred visitors a day, any ol’ host should do.
If you’re building a site that will have a couple of hundred visitors every minute, then Logic’s suggestions are good, or you might want to look into dedicated hosting.