Going Live - Website Load Testing...

[miner2049er]

I'm just putting the finishing touches to my website, which as one of its elements involves subscribers signing up. The site has a client-side of HTML, CSS and Javascript, with server-side PHP and MySQL. Here’s a miscellany of questions - especially directed to those who have created such a website (that signs up people), or know of someone who has.

 

(1) The overall experience. After launch of your site, how did the reality compare with the expectation, and what issues, if any, came to light only after you went live? Did things appear suddenly, or did they creep up on you over a few days/weeks?

 

(2) Load testing. I’m particularly interested in hearing tales from those who had a flood of visitors in a short amount of time, and how their site coped. There are various stories over the years of websites grinding to a halt – such as FriendsReunited.co.uk and Ebay.com - due to an influx of visitors or shaky architecture. Did you do any load testing before launch – seeing how the site would cope with multiple users accessing the site simultaneously - either using techniques/applications of your own, or external applications to simulate the users? If yes, what sort of things did you do/use?

 

(3) Error reporting. How does your live website store and report errors back to you – by email, log file and/or SMS alerts? If errors do occur, what if anything, gets displayed on your site to users?

 

(4) Prevention. Do you have any sort of early-warning system in place to alert you of any potential upcoming problems – such as exceeding bandwidth, or other resources such as CPU usage?

 

(5) Site Updates. When updating your code and/or database, do you shut the site down and have it show "Under Maintenance" - or do you have some other scheme – such as rotating sites, or live updates with table locks - to allow the site to stay up 24/7?

 

(6) Backups. What backup methods do you use, how often, and where do you keep the backup(s)? And if your database has ever been corrupted – how was your experience recovering data?

 

Any other bits of advice you can throw my way would be much appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Simon.

[LisaJill]

Before this is started - let me ask you what plan you are on? Some of the answers can be explained better knowing what kind of environment you're running on - ie: shared, reseller, semi-dedicated or dedicated. =)

[miner2049er]

Thanks for the reply. I'm currently on a shared server - and will be monitoring traffic closely to see whether it necessitates jumping ship to a less-restricted environment.

 

And what's the difference between semi-dedicated and dedicated? A quick Google search just now wasn't very enlightening.

 

Have a good weekend!

[TCH-Rob]

Semi-dedicated, much like shared except there are about 4 users on the same box as you. That does not always mean it is better in the long run. Dedicated is all you.