Take a step back

[Simpo Two]

I can see from other thread titles here that this is a recurring theme (I can't get beyind the thread titels as they won't load).

Anyway, assuming anyone does have the time for this thread to open, or has a trilion terraflop connection, my question is this.

Pistonheads probably has the highest proportion of IT wizzes outside IT. We see adverts boasting about hosting. Phers even OWN hosting companies. Carrenza tells us how st hot it is.

Of all forums, you'd expect PH to work fast and reliably. And yet frequently it runs like a Model-T on Mazola. Isn't it time for some clever IT people to grab this bull by the horns and bloody sort it out once and for all?

[miniman]

I doubt Haymarket will reveal the setup, number of servers, platforms, how the load balancing works, etc. in enough detail for anyone to be able to comment. Even the number of servers would be interesting to know. We run very small community sites (e.g. 10,000 users) and our bare minimum hardware setup for those would consist of 2 Squid reverse proxy caching accelerators, 4 web servers running either Apache or LiteHTTPD with either Mod Perl or PHP, and then at least a pair of database servers running PostgreSQL or MySQL. However it's not just about throwing hardware at it, neither is it money-no-object I would imagine.

ETA - also, "back in the day" I suspect there would be a lot more site users happy to pitch in and help than there would be today. Helping Ted make a living was one thing, helping Haymarket make a profit...

Edited by miniman on Thursday 15th May 12:24