Question

I’m starting a experimental project and I was looking for advice to choose the best option I have.

The project will be on the 100 – 1,000 user count. It collects its main data using javascript + json data from the user’s flickr page and then uses that to display specific flickr photos. The variables that need to be stored include user specific URL slug, and maybe 4 more short string variables. That all will need to be looked up on each page request. These variables will not change by time unless the user visits update page, and so these variables are static 99% of the time.

Each user’s page will be located at /user-slug

I have thought out three options though I do not want to limit myself to these three (please offer your own), not being an experienced coder at higher access counts, I was looking for the fastest, most static & cacheable, least resource consuming way of achieving this, and I’m sure you guys are far more clever than I am at achieving this.

for the N amount users:

1. completely static approach: N static html pages are created, each user page is updated whenever asked, htaccess mod-rewrite is used to make each html file resemble a directory access. Updating; Php is used to rewrite the static pages when user asks them to be updated, or a full N user rewrite is performed when template needs updating. Most of the in-development code resides in a javascript file so the template itself will probably not be edited as frequently. Each time a user page is called, a static html file is displayed, javascript collects data from flickr server and displays it.

2. half static approach: Php + mod rewrite is used to simulate the different N user pages, user slug and only user slug is stored in MySQL database, then user specific variables are loaded via individual unique static texfiles named after the user slug (user-slug.txt) via javascript by the browser client (this data is not sensitive). Each time a page is called, 1 MySQL call is made and 1 extra txt file is loaded in the header via javascript. Javascript collects data from flickr and displays it.

3. full dynamic approach: Php + mod rewrite is used to simulate the different N pages (as the above method). All user specific variables are stored in MySQL. Each time a page is called, about 4 MySQL calls are made, Php creates the template page using those variables. Javascript collects data from flickr and displays it. In this method, which I believe is the more common approach to multi-user websites, I am also looking for ways to make these php/MySQL calls cacheable on the server itself. I’m on shared hosting btw, I don’t have any low level access to the configuration itself.

Thank you so much for your input
Very, very appreciated!

Answer 1

I’d start with the full dynamic approach.

Then based on profiling and performance move those parts to caching that cost the most resources.

As they say ‘premature optimization is the root of all evil’. Don’t try to think what will take the most resources, but measure it by profiling time and memory usage.