59 ms·

Not a good reflection on your actual ability to scale when a 500 word blog post makes your entire web server choke after just a few minutes on the front page.

brokenwren 10y ago
That's what happens when 10,000 people hit your website all at once. :) I think it's probably Wordpress that is sucking here though.
- hack_edu 10y ago
  That makes it better? This is a marketing post and should reflect your company's strengths, especially when the topic of the post is about said quality.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    I always remember in moments like these that Cloudfare is something like $50-200 a month. Wait, a quick look is $0/$20/$200 with $0 or $20 probably covering it. Hmmm.
    - ddorian43 10y ago
      Cloudflare doesn't cache your sql queries.
      - morgante 10y ago
        It's a static webpage. You shouldn't need to re-run SQL queries for each user. Pages like this is literally what CDNs are great for.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        That's what I was thinking. Only need to do SQL on actual registration process. That's if you use a SQL DB for it as opposed to in-memory, key-value store that persistently writes to disk. Alternatively, doing data at app layer (eg AllegroCache-style) with a partitioning scheme distributing among a number of inexpensive nodes. Quite a few things to do before we run into SQL's problems even if it involves data processing.
        CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
        I'm building a CMS in the same vein as the others (WordPress, etc.) and made static page caching a first-class feature that bypasses the autoloader completely. https://github.com/paragonie/airship/blob/e24ea5a4605336b17190cefc300660b13c2a9535/src/public/index.php#L30-L55 https://github.com/paragonie/airship/blob/e24ea5a4605336b171... This is something that really ought to be baked-in in 2016.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Cool stuff. Also libsodium by default as I expected. :) You got a summary page listing the features and advantages of the CMS for those that don't do PHP? Other than probably extra attention to quality/security. As usual, I'll pass the info along to people online that might benefit from it.
        CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
        In fact, I do. It's still beta software (and the design used in the screenshot is out-of-date already). https://paragonie.com/project/airship https://paragonie.com/project/airship Working on the PKI and plugin distribution system right now, so people can make/share themes and whatnot.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Alright. Bookmarked. So, it's a basic CMS for the niche of people/companies who need more security or uptime than feature bloat. Has better update policy and works hard to make some security features more usable. Am I reading it right?
  - brokenwren 10y ago
    True, but the post is about scaling Passport, not really scaling Wordpress. I haven't seen the site crash, so I seems like its just taking the server a while to server up the static content.
    - melvinmt 10y ago
      Your dismissive tone is concerning. Because your Wordpress site doesn't load, we can't learn about your "Passport" service, so you're wasting 10,000 prospective customers.
- takno 10y ago
  Wordpress only sucks if you don't configure it for the expected traffic. At scalability anyway.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Which sadly is out of the box. Not that hard to scale static blog post wordpresses.. but man the default is like 4 requests per second bad ;)
    - brokenwren 10y ago
      Ouch. Looks like we need to do some serious blog tuning. :)
- autotune 10y ago
  Implementing something as simple as W3TotalCache and CloudFlare, and eliminating slow plugins via p3profiler, should mitigate any initial scaling issues assuming your server architecture is set to scale properly via dynamic scaling or horizontal if for some reason you're using on-prem, physical hardware.
- morgante 10y ago
  Plenty of sites with bigger traffic spikes than this run on WordPress. It shows that they haven't put any effort into scalability.
- CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  I've had a blog post sit at the #1 spot on HN for nearly 24 hours and my server never even sweated. I have a cheap VPS and didn't do anything fancy with caching. I just don't code like a n00b. Also, either use SuperCache or ditch WordPress entirely.

brokenwren 10y ago

That's what happens when 10,000 people hit your website all at once. :) I think it's probably Wordpress that is sucking here though.

hack_edu 10y ago
That makes it better? This is a marketing post and should reflect your company's strengths, especially when the topic of the post is about said quality.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I always remember in moments like these that Cloudfare is something like $50-200 a month. Wait, a quick look is $0/$20/$200 with $0 or $20 probably covering it. Hmmm.
  - ddorian43 10y ago
    Cloudflare doesn't cache your sql queries.
    - morgante 10y ago
      It's a static webpage. You shouldn't need to re-run SQL queries for each user. Pages like this is literally what CDNs are great for.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        That's what I was thinking. Only need to do SQL on actual registration process. That's if you use a SQL DB for it as opposed to in-memory, key-value store that persistently writes to disk. Alternatively, doing data at app layer (eg AllegroCache-style) with a partitioning scheme distributing among a number of inexpensive nodes. Quite a few things to do before we run into SQL's problems even if it involves data processing.
        CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
        I'm building a CMS in the same vein as the others (WordPress, etc.) and made static page caching a first-class feature that bypasses the autoloader completely. https://github.com/paragonie/airship/blob/e24ea5a4605336b17190cefc300660b13c2a9535/src/public/index.php#L30-L55 https://github.com/paragonie/airship/blob/e24ea5a4605336b171... This is something that really ought to be baked-in in 2016.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Cool stuff. Also libsodium by default as I expected. :) You got a summary page listing the features and advantages of the CMS for those that don't do PHP? Other than probably extra attention to quality/security. As usual, I'll pass the info along to people online that might benefit from it.
        CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
        In fact, I do. It's still beta software (and the design used in the screenshot is out-of-date already). https://paragonie.com/project/airship https://paragonie.com/project/airship Working on the PKI and plugin distribution system right now, so people can make/share themes and whatnot.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Alright. Bookmarked. So, it's a basic CMS for the niche of people/companies who need more security or uptime than feature bloat. Has better update policy and works hard to make some security features more usable. Am I reading it right?
- brokenwren 10y ago
  True, but the post is about scaling Passport, not really scaling Wordpress. I haven't seen the site crash, so I seems like its just taking the server a while to server up the static content.
  - melvinmt 10y ago
    Your dismissive tone is concerning. Because your Wordpress site doesn't load, we can't learn about your "Passport" service, so you're wasting 10,000 prospective customers.
takno 10y ago
Wordpress only sucks if you don't configure it for the expected traffic. At scalability anyway.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Which sadly is out of the box. Not that hard to scale static blog post wordpresses.. but man the default is like 4 requests per second bad ;)
  - brokenwren 10y ago
    Ouch. Looks like we need to do some serious blog tuning. :)
autotune 10y ago
Implementing something as simple as W3TotalCache and CloudFlare, and eliminating slow plugins via p3profiler, should mitigate any initial scaling issues assuming your server architecture is set to scale properly via dynamic scaling or horizontal if for some reason you're using on-prem, physical hardware.
morgante 10y ago
Plenty of sites with bigger traffic spikes than this run on WordPress. It shows that they haven't put any effort into scalability.
CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
I've had a blog post sit at the #1 spot on HN for nearly 24 hours and my server never even sweated. I have a cheap VPS and didn't do anything fancy with caching. I just don't code like a n00b. Also, either use SuperCache or ditch WordPress entirely.