Every evening I receive an automated e-mail showing every web site I’m maintaining along with how many messages it contains. Everything in Conversant is stored as a message — this article, replies in the discussion forum, etc.
A couple days ago, the number of messages stored on my server hit the 50,000 mark. No, not quite Slashdot-style numbers, but impressive for one guy in his spare time nonetheless.
When I first signed up for a dedicated server, one of my major concerns was whether or not the system would scale once there were 50,000 messages or more or when people were adding a couple hundred messages per day. It has, in fact, scaled remarkably well.
Right now, I’m serving up about 13,000 page views a day, with anywhere from 80 to 100 new messages per day during the weekdays, and some very complicated macros that show different versions of pages depending on a number of factors. Despite that, I rarely notice any slowdowns even at the busiest times of the day.