Hi all,

 

I just had a phone interview with a pretty big company and I was asked if I have experience with high-traffic websites (10k active users~) to which I stated "No". At best I have experience with 110 active users (according to google analytics) which is more or less my current job.

 

Thing is, I have no idea where to start learning about managing a high traffic website other than getting lucky. So I ask this question to all of you: how would you manage a high traffic site and what tools and techniques should I be looking at?

 

Currently to maintain the sites I work on I concat/minify css/js files, set cache expiry dates, and use development tools to locate bottlenecks. On the server-side with PHP my models are only selecting data that is necessary from their datasources etc.

 

What would be the next level from this? If it also helps, I use Laravel.

I've never worked on very high traffic sites, but have done on some that fall somewhere between.

 

The major things we look at initially:

 

1. Dedicated server optimised for the environment (if anything this is often the most important one)

2. Use of a CDN for static assets

3. Extensive use of caching, via CMS, expiry headers etc etc

4. Use the most appropriate content system

5. ...and of course good code optimised for performance

Laravel should be fine, as long its hosted well and the code is good.

 

No generic hosting sadly, but would probably look at someone like FortRabbit or Laravel Forge since since then can use AWS.

 

Code wise, the biggest issue with Laravel for me is using Eloquent heavily. If your doing relationships you need to be careful as they become seriously heavy using eloquent and have to revert to using raw queries to get the best speed.

Thank you guys for your input.

 

It seems to be the same techniques I'm already aware of, only that I lack the experience working at that level. I'm curious to play with Laravel Forge - I'll have to check that out.

 

Thanks again!

Thank you guys for your input.

 

It seems to be the same techniques I'm already aware of, only that I lack the experience working at that level. I'm curious to play with Laravel Forge - I'll have to check that out.

 

Thanks again!

 

Just to note that Forge is quite a basic service and you have to do alot of the work yourself. You still also need an account with AWS / DigitalOcean but it makes provisioning servers easier.

 

I just started using the basic level of FortRabbit and it seems okay if not a little bit pricey.

You have to use No. SQL , and use 2 section server first server use for coding and second server use for database. and last use dcn service.