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DVDA
Starting Member
9 Posts |
 Posted - 12 July 2003 : 17:43:02
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| i'm creating a group of community web sites (one each for restaurants/bars/automotive/small businees/retailers/convenience stores/etc) total will be around 50 - 100 different portals all running off of one set of web pages written in asp.net - vb.net readying in the host header and tailoring content to that specific site's focus. I think the .net parts will scale okay, but i'm also using Snitz Forums on the site and i would like my users to be able to share the same snitz forums code and database, if possible, so they can look at other communities info and forum posts if they want while still keeping their user name activated. I'm running snitz forums off of mySQL and i'm concerned the forums may have scalablity issues. We already have a large forum with nearly 12,000 members, and I may very well have as many as a 1-200,000 members when the linking of all the sites together is put in place. Does anyone have any ideas what i should do? can mysql handle this amount of traffic? can snitz forums handle this amount of traffic? Could i load balance the web and database servers in some way and how? Does anyone know a more scalable forums i can use if snitz wont hold up? I also would like to have a universal/seemless login from the community site into the forums. How powerful should my servers be? Is .net a good way to go? Any suggestions and comments are greatly appreciated. Thanks. :) |
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work mule
Senior Member
USA
1358 Posts |
Posted - 13 July 2003 : 00:18:37
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Well, as for Snitz handling that amount of traffic I would say it's not a problem.
We've been running it on a handful of sites and haven't had any troubles. In all cases the sites are all ran off the same web server and supported by a single database server (SQL Server).
FineScale Modeler - 18,220 Members
The Writer Magazine - 3,647 Members
Bead&Button Magazine - 1,400 Members
Dollhouse Miniatures Magazine - 574 Members
Birder's World Magazine - 124 Members
On Monday, we just went live with Snitz Forums on one site where we replaced a bad custom-coded forum which had been put together a couple of years ago by another company the website had been outsourced to. The site currently has 115,713 registered members and I have to say with the conversion to Snitz - it is working like a champ!! The majority of the users who have responded with feedback are very happy with it.
When dealing with a large user base, there are some tweaks that you will have to make -- like not displaying a list of members in the search page & doing something about the list of members when editing a forum (list of all members displayed for private forums).
Making the primary part of the site in .NET and using Snitz for your membership/registration/community will be interesting, but doable. For a bunch of our sites we're in that same situation. Snitz handles the login, sets the cookies and stuff and then redirects to the .NET pages passing a key in the querystring. The key is used in conjunction with the cookies for the .NET side to look up the user's information in the database and manage the user on the .NET part of the site.
I just couldn't give up using Snitz and the work that I've done with our community stuff. IMHO there just isn't anything that's as good as Snitz in the .NET world yet. Yeah, people have written .NET discussion boards, but when looking at some of them I have to wonder how much experience the people had in both using and administering a forum -- they're features are either not well thought out or don't have near the same features. Granted there are some nice ones in development that have potential, but they're not ready yet.
Another thing that can't be overlooked is the combined experience of developers and users that has gone into Snitz over the years. |
Edited by - work mule on 13 July 2003 00:51:42 |
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wizard
Junior Member
208 Posts |
Posted - 13 July 2003 : 06:16:42
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For large sites, the problem is always with the web servers. As long a your database server is able to process the info fast enough, it should be ok. Usually, main problems with database servers is the I/O. Db server is recommend RAID 10. A dual processor system would be ideal.
I forsee the need for load balancing on a few webservers (around 3 to 4 but depending on your traffic). I have seen forums running off 20+ webservers. Snitz is a good platform for the tasks you mention. I have not used MySQL long enough to comment but I can say that SQl Server would 100% be able to handle that load.
It is recommended that you get an external load balancer instead of using software configuration for the purpose. Also depending on traffic, 2 or more load balancers maybe required. Each webserver will host the same set of scripts using DSN to get to the database server.
However in any case, you will need 2 lan cards per server so that an internal network can be formed for transfer of data between the db and web servers. I can see you are on your way to renting 1/2 or a full rack.
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work mule
Senior Member
USA
1358 Posts |
Posted - 13 July 2003 : 15:58:44
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quote:
Originally posted by DVDA
We already have a large forum with nearly 12,000 members, and I may very well have as many as a 1-200,000 members when the linking of all the sites together is put in place.
Another thing to keep in mind is that it's not so much the number of members you have, but how active they are. How frequently do they come back and use the site? How many are regulars? How many have signed up and have never returned? How many lurkers do you have -- people who visit but never register? So don't base your needs or requirements entirely on the total number of members.  |
Edited by - work mule on 13 July 2003 16:03:25 |
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DVDA
Starting Member
9 Posts |
Posted - 19 July 2003 : 20:28:26
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quote:
Making the primary part of the site in .NET and using Snitz for your membership/registration/community will be interesting, but doable. For a bunch of our sites we're in that same situation. Snitz handles the login, sets the cookies and stuff and then redirects to the .NET pages passing a key in the querystring. The key is used in conjunction with the cookies for the .NET side to look up the user's information in the database and manage the user on the .NET part of the site.
I just couldn't give up using Snitz and the work that I've done with our community stuff. IMHO there just isn't anything that's as good as Snitz in the .NET world yet.
Thanks work mule I really appreciate your help. Right now we are working hard on figuring out what cookies snitz sets and how step by step we use the keys and how to expand the login throughout the whole .net site.
I'm not the main programmer on this, so if you could help dumb down any tips on how we go about using the snitz login throughout the whole .net site, I can bring it back to the main .net programmer and we can give stuff a try.
Thanks for any help anyone can offer on this. ;) |
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ruirib
Snitz Forums Admin
Portugal
26364 Posts |
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