database and website speed

[astounded]

I'm a neophyte at this, but I created a .php web site using Dreamweaver MX. It's straightforward - with 8 products per page. Each product has a thumbnail photo, and 20-30 words of text. Both photo and copy are drawn up from a mysql database using php.

Right now there are 25 total products, and the thing is blazing fast. Amazed me. My question is, if I have 500 products, will the speed of the pages loading slow down? And if so, how much?

[Ankheg]

In my experience, assuming you're on a reasonably fast machine, it shouldn't slow appreciably or even noticably. I have two sites with PHP/MySQL backends, one an ecommerce store with just under 100 products, and one a message board with going on 800 posts. Both were fast early on, and both have remained just as fast despite growth. As long as you're not running on a 386SX-33 or something, you should be fine. :)

[DenRomano]

I have 1 site with about 48,000 items and another with 7,000 items both running on the same server with no speed problems at all.

[jatar_k]

how is the thumbnail generated or is it just an actual thumbnail stored in a directory somewhere? If it is dynamically created that could be a bottle neck.

You never know if what you have built is going to slow down as things increase, even though we try our best to load test and to design scalable systems. It also depends what factors we are taking into account.

Server setup - shared host, dedicated
Traffic to server and/or site
Is the software presently designed to be scalable?

[astounded]

The thumbnails are draw from a directory on the hard drive. Nothing complicated. Shared hosting, but it isn't overloaded. And from what I have read here, it sounds like the site will probably stay fast as I add more pages to it.

[jatar_k]

Sounds like it will then.

Most systems are going to slow down at some point, something will happen that you hadn't accounted for and some tweaks will need to be made. It is part of the natural cycle.

[bilalak]

Hi
the issue in here is not with PHP as much as it is related to mySQL. Because in PHP running a query and displaying the output of it does not need a lot of processing power.
So there would not be any delay from this issue but some microseconds.

Concerning mySQL, it map tables to files on the hard disk. The larger the file would get, the longer it would needs to load it and hash it.

I think, you can distribute your products into categories and use SQL querries to select only some products from one category and if the number is more than 25 then u can split the list into more pages. In here, mySQL is the fastest in mid size databases and no delay at all comaring to other engines

:)