CMS and Concurrent connections

[Gene]

Hi all!

I'm considering implementing a Content Management System for our school web site, which is currently just a static HTML site. The CMS we're considering is open source. It utilizes PHP and MySQL.

Our school has 1250 students. The CMS would be used for students to login & check their homework assignments on the web.

I'm guessing that we might potentially have 100-200 students concurrently logging into the CMS during peak activity.

After reading several threads at the CMS's website, it's clear that there are server load issues when too many students are online, but nobody has a clear answer to what hardware specs are needed.

What kind of hosting package do you think I need to make this work?

Thanks,
Gene

[bill]

The CMS would make the site, right? I'm guessing the students would log onto the site made by the CMS, not the CMS itself. If that's the case then you would treat this like any other web site server...just make sure your setup can handle the load. You didn't say what the CMS ran on so it would be difficult to answer more.

[Gene]

Thanks for the input Bill,

On Friday, I had 120 of our faculty members log in as fictitious students and simultaneously browse around the site run by the CMS. It went off without a hitch! Average page load was less than 2 seconds. The users were viewing pages; not uploading data changes.

I'm beginning to think that the other people who were having server issues with the CMS were using some really CHEAP Web hosts.

On another note...

I've been told by a prospective Web host that their MySQL database will not accept more than 20 connections, and that I'd need a dedicated server to have 100-200 people online on the CMS.

I don't know much about the "jargon" but I think there's a misunderstanding about "connections" and the number of users using the CMS. It just doesn't add up. I think their comparing apples & oranges.

My feeling is I could have had 200-300 people hitting that site on Friday and it still would not have been a problem. And I'm on an average run-of-the-mill shared server.

Does anyone know what's up with all this confusion about "database connections" and "simultaneous members accessing the site."

--Gene

[pete_m]

You're right - there is a difference between the number of live db connections and the number of simultaneous users.

The database queries on a typical CMS webpage will take a fraction of a second to complete - the connection will be created, used, and destroyed in virtually no time.

Each user will be looking at said webpage for several seconds, maybe even several minutes.

Therefore you can have hundreds of "simultaneous" users, but only a few live database connections at any one time.