Are you being served ?
So, my free-ride at the expense of Incisive Media is
coming to an end - I used to host all my sites on
their network (and with 100 MBit/sec access, it was
pretty speedy :-), but since I've moved out of the
country, they've decided to go for a more-managed
hosting solution. Unfortunately, that means they'll
be moving out of the co-location facility that they
(and therefore I) have been in for a few years.
Goodbye Level-3, it was good while it lasted...
Of course, it wasn't just a free ride, I pretty much engineered their web infrastructure
One of the things I'm reasonably proud of is that the system was both modular and scalable - it started off as a simple templating system, and grew, (and grew...), but because I kept providing general-case solutions to specific problems, it scaled really well - to this day you can go to (eg: risknews.net, view the source, scroll down, and see the stats for the page in a comment at the bottom :-)
Of course, it wasn't just a free ride, I pretty much engineered their web infrastructure
- a template-driven website engine (now with over
150 sites running on it, originally specced for 5)
- a comprehensive permissions system (subscribe
to a magazine, or for a period, or for N views, or
N free views then pay-to-view) at the heart of the
template engine.
- the database behind it all, tying everything
together
- an XML-RPC interface to the various components
in the system
- various feed systems (XML, FTP, SOAP) that
could be generated and maintained by Incisive
- a payments management solution,
- back-end integration into their publishing
systems,
- a message-board system
- a bulk-emailer with graphical (non-technical
:-) reports
- a jobs-indexing system for Incisive's
advertisers, allowing the advertisers to control
the look and feel within an incisive-provided
template.
- a full-text search index (I tried the MySQL
one, but it was way too slow, mine can do queries
over a million pages in ~1/10th of a second, orders
of magnitude faster than MySQL on the same
hardware)
- integration of search into other components
(eg: mail-merge, the editor does a search, and
these form most of the body of the templated email,
together with his comments intermingled in the
prose)
- dynamic templating, so search results can be
presented differently on different sites (for
example)
- PHP modules, evaluated inline to provide
dynamic content (this is how the different search
results was done :-)
- a back-end management system that presented
different interfaces depending on the technical
level of the user (as decided by Incisive :-)
- a dynamic firewall - if the webserver didn't
like its input, it could add the current IP address
to the list of those blocked by the machine's
firewall. Since it was machine-generated, it stored
a reason why the firewalling had happened as well,
which came in handy when irate businessmen 'phoned
up to ask why they couldn't see the site [grin]
One of the things I'm reasonably proud of is that the system was both modular and scalable - it started off as a simple templating system, and grew, (and grew...), but because I kept providing general-case solutions to specific problems, it scaled really well - to this day you can go to (eg: risknews.net, view the source, scroll down, and see the stats for the page in a comment at the bottom :-)