AnandTech: A Brief History of Time
by Jason Clark on July 26, 2004 6:52 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
AnandTech 4.0
This release of the site was a fairly major upgrade in terms of back-end code. We decided to do a rewrite on the site code, which we have been using since version 2.0. ColdFusion MX had been released, and AnandTech was used as a high load test site during the beta of ColdFusion MX. Needless to say, we beat on it and found a few issues here and there that were fixed prior to MX's release. One of the significant changes in the ColdFusion language was the ability to form code components into a web-based API, which really helped us organize the code into more reusable sections.Reporting of web statistics was starting to cause us some grief in this release due to the amount of clustered servers and log file size. We obtained a quote from WebTrends for their software, but it was going to cost around $15,000 for our server farm. We felt that analyzing log files was archaic, and we decided to make our own statistics tracking system. Development of the web statistics system took a couple of weeks, and is the same system that we use to date.
Just as our traffic was increasing, so was the size of our editoral staff, and the amount of content being published. Anand and the other editors asked for an easier way to create their graphs; basically, a central system to manage the data that goes in the graphs and to be able to re-generate them without having to upload images. So, we did some research and found a fantastic piece of software called SwiffChart from GlobFX, a company in France. This graphing engine allowed us to construct our graphs programmatically from our content management system. SwiffChart gave us a number of file formats in which to save the generated graphs. We had originally used Flash because of its file size when compressed (smaller than any other conventional format). We recently switched to PNG format, the next smallest format due to the number of readers who can't have the plugin or want it for that matter. To date, we still use this graphing system, although it has been enhanced over the past year with various features to make it even easier for our editorial staff to use.
During this release, we had a few issues with the Windows version of Apache, which we used because of mod_gzip (HTTP Compression) module. Apache wasn't threading properly on Windows at that time (prior to version 2 of Apache). We decided to switch to IIS, and a HTTP compression module called PipeBoost, which we still use now. The next upgrade was the largest in the history of the site.
Hardware used in version 4.0
5 x Dual AMD Athlon MP 1900+ w/ 512MB Memory
View version 4.0 of the website
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Brickster - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Great article!!! Thank you so much for publishing this, as it is a testament to Anandtech's drive to help the community understand and appreciate hardware AND software technology for all that it can help us in our personal and business ventures.Personally, I am starting a database driven website, and have been looking for advice on what approach to take. This insight has helped me TREMENDOUSLY, and I thank you for the article!
Keep up the good work and do let us know how things go!
Cheers,
Brickster
JasonClark - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Geesh jason, spell. Use what best fits your business.JasonClark - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
AutomaticErik, and .NET has a lot of advantages over PHP, PHP is most certainly no better than .NET. They both have their uses, and their different target markets. Use what your best fits your business, thats the bottom line. PHP does not fit our system infrastructure, so we use .NET.washboard - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Maybe this is not the place, BUTUsing Mozilla 1.7 with "enable Java Script on" site loads very slow. With it off the site is snappy. Don't have the problem with IE. Have a very fast DSL connection. Love this site, keep up the good work.
Thanks
John Coleman
AutomaticErik - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
I've been doing web design and database management for years and I've never once run across a project that wouldn't be able to use PHP/MySQL. I think most don't realize the true power you have with a PHP/MySQL setup. Its certainly every bit as powerful as any of the other soultions out there and in most tests and benchmarks, its faster and more efficient. I've even run personal benchmarks and found this to be true.All in all, people use what they are comfortable with and in that respect, PHP isn't for everyone. But it does hold many advantages over .NET. Most just don't mess around with it enough to find that out.
JasonClark - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Sling, we actually should run whatever we want to..., or whatever we feel works well in our environment. PHP isn't for everyone and holds no advantage over .NET. .NET is free, granted the OS is not but neither are commercial linux solutions like redhat or suse?. Again, we like windows, it works just as well as linux and fits our needs just fine.L8r.
SlingXShot - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Btw Jason, you have a bug. You should write some kind of script to warn the user when clicking Post Comment when this form box is empty.SlingXShot - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
So many updates, you guys should have started with php, no costs running that. With PHP when there is an update, and you are using old code, there is always a easy very around it, with quick fixes. I can't wait to play around with PHP 5.SlingXShot - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
sonicDivx - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Jason,Thx for the reply, yeah I was wondering would make a great case study. Also be a good lesson for developers. Glad its all worked for ya, and my interest is peaked in looking at VS 2003.
That's cool. I'll tell my co-worker who is Alpha testing Blackstone (next version of CF) that they really need to keep these things in mind.