I am going to host a website which is forum related (programmed in php and mysql) so it might attract 100 to 200 or maybe more per hour/ at the same time when it is launched as we will invite people to log in the site actively from time to time.
I have been looking around for a server which can cope with the busy traffic above. Then I have this answer below from the hosting server which many people use it for small businesses/ websites,
'We offer unlimited traffic therefore the number of visitors you stated
should not be a problem. However, since we limit the number of database
connections to a maximum of 24 users, only 24 users can login at the
same time. Another user will be able to login after the other one logs
out.'
Then I get confused - unlimited traffic that allow unlimited visitors but database connections to a maximum of 24 users,
'However, since we limit the number of database
connections to a maximum of 24 users...'
I don't quite understand the information above - the entire site content is database driven, so every click will send a request to connect to the database, does it mean that only 24 people can see the website at the same time?
Maybe logging in database is a different thing from connecting a database? Then, I really don't understand what it means by 'logging in' from the server point of view, as far as I understand with the knowledge I have - even though we describe it as logging in a website, no body actually 'logs in' the database but requesting their id, password, etc, then the browser uses cookies for the login users to insert/ update/ delete rows in the database. Am I right?
After all, please let me know if you know any hosting company can provide an unlimited/ decent database connections that I can run my forum.
Many thanks!
I assume they mean that you cannot have more than 24 concurrent connections to the database. Every time you serve a page from your application, you will connect to the database at the beginning of the request and probably disconnect once the page has been sent (you might want to check that none of the code / php architecture uses permanent connections). This would mean that you won't be able to serve more than 24 pages at the same time. Now that may or not be an issue as 24 concurrent connections is usually quite a bit of traffic if it's constant.
However, you should ask your host what happens for the 25th connection, does the server wait for a connection to drop so that it can grant you access or does it plain refuse the connection?