We get a lot of requests inquiring about our platform and traffic stats. Our architecture has evolved over the last year and is probably due for another upgrade!
Platform
Details
Our LAMP stack is pretty standard with some settings tweaked to match our hardware. We started on a shared server and moved to a dedicated server about 14 months ago. We added another server about a month ago for caching and testing purposes. So for all practical purposes the site still runs on ONE server.
This is made possible by the other 3 components in our architecture - lighttpd, apc and memcahe.
Conventional caching mechanism, which cache the whole page, are not feasible with a site such as IndianPad. Instead, we use apc and memcache to aggressively cached anything that moves on the site. The caching is handled within the code and not by timeouts so anytime something is changed, the cache is rebuilt. Both memcache and apc have been relatively stable and take some load off our overworked database.
Our lighttpd installation works behind apache and handles most of the images and other static content on the site. For e.g. we currently have over 400,000 images from about 18,000 sites. lighttpd has been very stable and takes a lot of load off our cpu and apache processes.
Conclusion
- caching mechanisms (memcache or similar) are a life saver and your database will thank you for using them
- lighttpd is a another god-send if you deal with a lot of static content (png, mp3, flv, etc)