UNFINISHED DRUPAL MINDMAP... WHATS THE BEST CONFIGURATION?

How many sites? How many site admins? How much traffic? Anon or registered traffic?

I have only one drupal site, and I will recieve about 50/50 logged in/anonymous vieres. But the log-ined ones will be doing stuff like creating blogs, managing groups, messaaging, etc. There is also heavy aggregation.

There are organic group admins, and right now I am the only site admin.

There are 650 registered users now, there will immediately within a 1-2 week span be an additional 560-700 users, and then in two months 700 more.maybe around 2500-3000 registered users by April. I am guessing about 40-70 percent will log on simultaneously.

I am trying to research everything as much as I can and understand it. I just got back from my classes (ama teacher) but off the top of my head one of my concerns is the infrormation I found aout about pantheon, it talks about installing the pagepulisher, or page manager, sorry its a similiar name to that… but there are many uncompatible modules… something to do with different modules using sessions vs. those which use cookies. I havent had time to fully learn about it. I would hate to have it destroy all my contributed modules, or use a lot of time….. I havent had time to chek each module I have for compatibility and then check if there is a patch to make it work.

For that the ngnix solution sounds good… but barely… I am trying to get every peice of info I can read and make a plan of attack asap.

Thanks for any info and advice. I appreciate your time.

That was pressflow http://pressflow.org/ …

Pressflow is an optimized version of Drupal that a company called Four Kitchens maintains for a commercial client and then releases back the community. It removes some legacy code for older versions of php and non-mysql database and adds some patches to add new features. Drupal core does not add new features between major releases. Pressflow is excellent, adds some really good patches with regard to caching. I use it and never had a compatibility problem. I've only ever heard of one problem two years ago having to do with using memcache to store sessions. You shouldn't worry about using Pressflow.

Aegir is a nice web frontend for managing multiple Drupal installations. It has some good features regarding backup and migration also, even if you only have one site, but where it really shines is the ability to spin up and manage multiple and different flavors of Drupal for multiple people. I don't use aegir personally, but if I needed to allow various other admins to create and manage their own sites, I would. The latest Aegir can use apache or nginx as a web server.

Pantheon is a full server install including integration of several different server daemons that can enhance Drupal. In addition to apache for web serving, it also configures Varnish for reverse proxy caching which can speed up your site tremendously for anonymous users, but not registered users. It also configures the memcached daemon as a data cache which takes some of the load off mysql for simple storage operations. It also includes a daemon called hudson which is I believe is an advanced task/cron daemon. It also sets up a tomcat server for using apache solr as a search backend. All those different technologies can make Drupal run better and scale better, but aren't necessary. They take time and expertise to learn and manage, and the Pantheon project does all that setup for you. If you need to tailor your install (like special cookie handling in Varnish) then they also add complexity and make maintaining the system tougher. Pantheon uses Pressflow. I don't run Pantheon.

nginx is a webserver, and can replace apache with the use of a php daemon as a backend. It solves some of the shortcomings of using apache in the pre-fork configuration, such as inefficient memory use. I'm a big fan of nginx.

I probably wouldn't go with aegir for just one site.

Pantheon is a great project and uses several powerful and sophisticated pieces of software other than the apache web server, to increase performance and scalability. They're also planning to do hosting of their platform. I'm not sure if I'd use Pantheon on my own unless I understood all those technologies and was willing to support them. On the other hand, once you host with them, they'll include tech support, so if you have a problem, they'll know what to do. So there's definitely more reason to go with the Pantheon platform if you do it through their hosting.

I personally use nginx for web serving and use some of the reverse proxy caching features of nginx for anonymous users. It's not as powerful and flexible as varnish, but it's simpler and meets my needs. I use memcached, and it's good, but not really necessary. I use jetty for apache solr which decouples the search system from mysqld which isn't so great at search. It's only necessary if you have a large amount of content or if searching your site is a major priority, like for a parts database. Solr also gives you faceted search.

Does that answer any of your questions?

It is helpfull… I am trying to decide still, and have created a mindmap that you are free to view and edit about the information about setting up a drupal installation on a vps. I have spent all day researching,, and have a lot of questions… I have been mainly collecting data. I havent searched google vids or youtube yet. I hope this is usefull for other people here and if someone wants to edit it feel free… it is a work in progress. I need to try to decide.

A quick question, I am coming from a shared server, and I was running drupal 6.x latest dev… they kicked me off becasue too many resources. I will try to restore my site to here. Im not sure how Im going to set it up, but will my set up have to match their setup to get things working? When I restore the database back up what if my server is set up different than theirs?? I havent had a chance to read about how to do this yet….

here is the mindmap. I can only put it here a littlebit untill I get a chance to get my new server running. This is at my old website.

www.thelifephotoraphy.com/hosting breakdown.mm ~~[http://www.thelifephotography.com/hosting%20breakdown.mm" target="_blank">](http://www.thelifephotography.com/hosti … eakdown.mm">http://www.thelifephotography.com/hosting%20breakdown.mm](

Im worried about all the issues with pantheons caching stuff not working with the quiz module… Right now I will check out youtube and googel docs to finish data collecting and then I must make a choice….

I am scared about the admin required for all of these caching issues. But I also read how fast they make everything….

and things were pretty slow here in china.. use freemind to view the mindmap

It depends on what you mean by setup. Drupal shouldn't be too dependent on a particular flavor of apache or php.

Yeah, caching can get complicated, but it's also a huge speed boost and resource saver when you can use it correctly.