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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Phiro - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
So how are you laid out? Are your web servers clustered? Are you using App Center? Component Load Balancing? Request forwarding?JasonClark - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
In regards to linux, our expertise lies in windows and it hasn't given us any grief what so ever. Windows can be stable if it is administrated properly.Code is as bloated as the developer makes it, experience, experience...
joeld - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
alfatekpt - what are the advantages of PHP/MySql over Windows and the .Net platform? I haven't researched this much, but I am under the impression that a SQL server is better than a MySQL server, and would guess that PHP/Apache would be a little faster than IIS/.NET, but that's just a guess. I know it's very easy to code on .NET, which can make your pages bloated if you are not careful - something that hardly happens with PHP.alfatekpt - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
You have servers with high needs and you use Windows and .NET plataform... I don't need to be a big *nix zealot to say that is so wrong...You never tried PHP/MySql? You can save the money in software to hire a linux sys admin to tune your servers...
vda - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
vda - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Did you ever considered using Linux?sonicDivx - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Very Interesting. Im a ColdFusion developer so kinda bummed that you had switched. Looking at the performance numbers, I was wondering was % of improvement can be attributed to .Net and wondering did you try recoded routines in MX to do a performance comparisons ( always new ways to skin a cat).Just curious from an informational standpoint.
Thx
ChucklesHB - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
I got turned onto Anandtech about... 2 years ago (the 3.0 version was only around a short time) and I've been a fan ever since.As a web developer myself, it's great to see sites that don't have an issue with showing the evolution of the technology behind the scenes. Thanks for a peek behind the curtains. ;)
Creig - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
It'd be nice to be able to go through the old news/forums again. Maybe they could be rehosted on a "Limited time only" basis so the oldtimers could reminisce and the newcomers could see cutting edge overclocking with a 300a Celeron that would do 450. :)RZaakir - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Cool article,But come on now, ASP.NET syntax is VERY different from ASP. If for no other reason than the fact that you're going from VBScript to VB and Javascript to J#/C#.
Not to mention the other features like User/Server controls (as opposed to SSIs), Assemblies (as opposed to COM Objects), and language independence. Though ASP was a bit more flexible than many people thought on the latter.