From 10 million PV: Explore the development course of Monkey Island community

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Site name: Monkey Island Game Community: Web site: http://bbs.houdao.com/, this is a webmaster established 03 forum, the establishment of the station has been used VBB Dvbbs Discz Discuz.nt Forum, the last choice of Phpwind, is that we have access to the use of Phpwind Forum program to do one of the largest web site, the entire station has four forums, of which the game Forum Day posted more than 120,000, Baidu statistics show data, daily average PV over tens of millions. The entire site uses only 2 servers, web and MySQL, which fully illustrate the Phpwind forum's high load capacity and low resource consumption.

The following is the Monkey Island Community webmaster wrote the 5-year construction station mentality process, released as follows to share with you:

Build station for me this communication professional person is a very accidental thing, my job is to engage in telecommunications equipment, that is, program-controlled switchboard, routers, ATM switches, optical transmission of these, but the application layer is still very far from the gap. At the end of 2003, I moved to a new house, just met a neighbor of my age recommended a game: Counter Strike. I am not very interested in this game, I do not play CS until now. I found that a lot of people play CS, at that time the forum dedicated to exchange CS is very few. So I spent 100 yuan to buy a 100M virtual space, with the space provider of free level 2 domain name, using the popular VBB Forum program to establish the current Monkey Island game Forum http://bbs.houdao.com embryonic.

Because I do not know CS, the forum was just established, I am in the major underground CS forum (not open to the outside) reproduced and summed up a lot of the essence of the CS information on the forum, and then I will introduce the site to my neighbor that CS fanatic, and asked him to introduce my website to his CS teammates, This is the first group of members of the Forum. Such Word-of-mouth marketing, of course, can not have good advertising effect, a week in the past there are only dozens of registered members. So I also adhere to the major well-known CS forum published soft text ads, Sina, Tom, NetEase, Sohu and other portals of the game forum every day will appear my soft wen, at that time these forum managers must have to me this manual intelligent advertising posting machine is very annoying.

The effect of this kind of propaganda is quite effective at the beginning of the construction station, the membership of the Forum is more than 1000, and the number of online people is about 20. But this time, the space business in the same server rental out of space too much, I rented virtual space more and more unstable, space business Server is often hung horse and DDoS, I only watch their hard-earned flow of the daily reduction. I called the space merchant many times to negotiate, but the situation was still, so I decided to change the space. Do not use the current space, means that the space provider free of charge of the level 2 domain name also have to give up, which makes me very regret did not buy a top-level domain name. I find a way to look for a good international domain name, but a little rhyming 4-digit pure letter. com has been registered, and other familiar words have long been used. As anytime couldn't think of a suitable domain name, I decided to find inspiration slowly in my life. February 2004 I saw in the movie theater is aggressively "the mobile phone", inside the line "personhood should be kind" Let me remember profoundly. After going home, I hurried to the Internet to inquire about the kind of pinyin houdao.com is registered, query results let me overjoyed, immediately spent 50 yuan to buy this domain name. Since then I have not subsidized the site for a penny, Monkey Island's initial capital of only 100 yuan space costs plus 50 yuan domain name registration fee. Next is the website of the Chinese name, in the end with a kind of forum or other? Because of the word "honest" although we are familiar with, but no outstanding memory characteristics, can not be used as a website brand to promote. I associate with the very fire of the cat, NIU, are common animal name plus verbs, so I set the Chinese name down "Monkey Island."

After the domain name and website names are identified, the next is to find a stable virtual space, when the provision of virtual space services is very small and very expensive. Just when I have a headache, a friend of mine is a network administrator, he is willing to provide me with free server, although this server in his office, is actually a gateway server of their company, he also often play games on it, but also make me feel is timely help. Because of the independent server, I have dozens of g of the site space, you can open the upload of larger pictures and accessories, which in the virtual space to m units sold in the era, Monkey Island with most other personal sites do not have the hardware competitive advantage. Friends of the server is NT system, because the ASP is more suitable for running on NT, I will forum program from VBB to the popular dynamic network.

The next situation is beyond my expectation, the forum daily added more than 400 registered members, the total number of registered members quickly broke through 50,000. At this time no longer need me to personally go to the major websites posted, enthusiastic members of the initiative to publicize. In this way the development of more than 1 years, to 2005 site traffic to keep 20,000 IP per day, or even do not need any search engine collection and links are also so.

This time I joined a number of advertising alliances, through the Forum ads I also received some advertising revenue, while I have some of the forum's original resources for the VIP download, through the way with the original, also received some service income. In fact, in late 2004 to late 2005 due to changes in my work, very little internet to manage the forum, and even 99.9% of members including forum moderators do not know that I am the forum's true founder. So let its development to the middle of 2005, Friends of the server more and more unstable, a friend reload system did not tell me, will be the site of the hard disk format, resulting in the forum back to 3 months ago, there is a friend of the company to rectify the network, resulting in a site interruption for several months, Server Gesanchaiwu will be interrupted for a variety of reasons 2, 3 days. The previously accumulated popularity was interrupted by countless interruptions, and the torment vanished. Because the server is a friend free of charge, I also inconvenient to the friend to do too much complaining, I am determined to have their own server.

Through more than a year of Web site profit practice, I have accumulated more than 8,000 yuan, at that time the advertising fee is very good to earn, each unit PV advertising revenue is almost 2008 more than 50 times times, unlike now spam site is too much, online advertising is worthless. October 2005 I spent 5000 configuration of a 1U server, although the name of the server, in fact, only the core of the desktop added a server shell, and then I use the remaining 3000 yuan to pay 1 years of hosting costs, so the forum new Matrix was born. Have the independent control of the server and stable professional room environment is equal to have fertile soil, Monkey Island Forum to regain a healthy growth environment, flow steadily rise. By 2006 Monkey Island has become the undisputed CS industry's most popular flow of the most popular personal website, the daily IP is greater than 30,000, in the CS industry visibility also reached a very difficult to overcome the height. This time the CS has developed to the bottleneck, and there is a trend of declining, want to continue to expand the flow of only outside the development of CS space.

At that time the forum income already had a little accumulation, I began to merge other personal website road. The entire 2007 I Am I Monkey Island's advertising revenue assorted 8 personal websites, of course, the purchase price is not high, hundreds of to thousands of yuan have, including the use of ASP program, there are PHP programs. Have information, social, functional sites, covering the novels, games, children, education and other aspects, coupled with my own common CMS program to do a new site, I have a total of more than 20 sites, this is the current site I have the most time, now eliminated only a few left. Fortunately the server is NT, I can run PHP can also run ASP, have MySQL also have MSSQL.

The overall flow of the server has greatly increased, with a daily total IP greater than 80,000. The server's hardware and software can not afford such traffic, the site is constantly due to the traffic is too large to have access to the situation. A friend suggested that I use Linux, which is said to have better load capacity and stability. At that time I used the Dynamic Network Forum program just due to the change of official network officials, into a stagnant stage, and PHP forum program increasingly popular. I also have the use of Phpwind in the Forum, through the ASP Forum and PHP forum for the actual operation of the effect of comparison, I also tend to abandon the ASP forum from the switch to a comprehensive lamp (linux+apach+mysql+php) system architecture.

December 2007 I assembled my own 2nd server, this server is dual 4 core Xeon Cpu+2 SAS hard drive RAID0 accelerated +8g memory, pure lamp architecture, more stable system and more suitable for enhancing user stickiness of the Forum program to make the site's development more robust and fast.

2007 as a result of the gradual decline of CS, domestic major game manufacturers continue to launch FPS type of the first person shooting online games, Monkey Island Forum on the exchange of content also gradually from the exclusively of the CS post into the beginning of the battlefield, special forces and other posts sporadic. Constantly have moderators suggested me to increase the FPS games on the plate, so I added some new first-person shooter game plate.

Change always happens unconsciously. At the beginning of 2008, the moderator told me that the current non-CS plate popularity has surpassed the CS plate popularity. (here to reveal a privacy, I almost do not play any game, the only played a net games is QQ fantasy, then I want to engage in virtual trading site to play this game, QQ fantasy is my current only played online games.) Although the first time to play online games, but I spent 5 months in the game to earn more than 3,000 yuan, but also is the most powerful pharmacist in Xanadu district at that time. I mainly earn gold coins by selling cards, and then use gold coins to buy and sell game equipment to earn renminbi. Incidentally, if the game manufacturers can use Taobao model to allow members of each other to buy and sell virtual goods, this model is very development money. Listen to the moderator that said, not often on the site I hurriedly open the site Baidu statistics, found that now to the site's members are more to find through the FireWire, Dungeons and Warriors and so I first heard of the game, I think the time for the reform of Monkey Island should come.

At this time my server also has a good development of the novel Forum: Send the forum http://www.paipaitxt.com, I am also the management of the pie and Monkey Island, the 2 user data independent and ownership of the same forum to worry about. If you do not break, you will be reborn only if you change completely. In order to save costs, I did not pay people to write programs, but bought some books on PHP and MySQL, began to learn some basic programming knowledge, through nearly 1 months of continuous learning, practice, learning, and then practice, I have 2 forums of user data merged, And in the original post data and plate data based on the division of more professional 4 forums: Game forum, novel Forum, CS Forum, Life Forum. 4 Forums Use the same user data, but the Forum interface in order to match their respective themes and different styles, it seems that there is no link between the various forums, in fact, in management, user data, user level is the same forum.

The reformed Forum is responsive to the needs of the members and the development of the times, unexpectedly smooth. Only half a year, by October 2008, the site's traffic has broken through the day IP20 million, the highest number of posts over 400,000. I planned to be able to maintain at least a year of development of the server has begun to be unstable, MySQL query time is more and more long, PHP also frequently appear suspended animation, 100M network card traffic has been averaged more than 80M per second of traffic accounted for, only constant refresh to squeeze into the site. I had to face a terrible problem how to spend more than 20,000 yuan to build up the accumulation of advertising to the structure of a 10 million PV, network card downlink traffic is greater than 200M forum! I consulted some online knowledge of the system architects and professional DBAs, select a cost-effective and effective way: To add new servers to do the Web services alone, currently using the server alone to do DB services. As a result of the 1U server is generally only 2 network cards can not support 300M above traffic, I also Amoy from Taobao 2 USB card, Linux hardware support than win more than a strong, USB card plug can be used. So the Web server has 4 network card openings, a network card port with the DB server connection, the other 3 network cards to do flow load balance to the external network. Web Server configuration: 2 4 Core Xeon cpu+12g memory + 4 SAS do RAID0 acceleration, DB server with the original old server 2 4 core Xeon Cpu+8g memory + 2 SAS do RAID0 acceleration. But the bottleneck of MySQL query is still unresolved, by looking for relevant information, I use MySQL slow query function, found that this is because the General Forum program does not take into account the large load of thoughtful consideration caused. I changed the paging code that used to use the limit start,num directly to the SELECT * from table where col> with the subquery (select Col from table limit start,1) limit num, Replace the original Single-column index with a composite index that matches the SQL query statement, convert the frequently invoked SQL with PHP write operations cache, and translate like search into Chinese full-text search. After this optimization, MySQL can barely support the 10 million PV forum, but still a bit slow, so I installed Memcache, and the forum's SQL class to support the Memcache statement. Although there are some delays in using memcache, this delay is a much more tolerable option than waiting for a lengthy SQL query to browse the site's members.

November 2008, I ushered in the most glorious moment of the establishment of the station: Server daily flow of more than 10 million PV, day independent IP is greater than 300,000, real-time network card traffic for 260M per second. I'm planning my next server when it's time to go online, and then I'll separate the attachments out using a separate attachment server. At present, the forum has hundreds of moderators, thousands of assistant managers, millions of registered members, they are unpaid for the forum's work. I am also planning a function that can make the owners and members profitable, and how much the profit is proportional to the effectiveness of the Moderator and the degree of enthusiasm of the members.

Under the last advertisement, who can invest me a hardware platform that can withstand 3 million IP per day? I believe I can do 100 million PV.

PV chart with two forums:

My Contact: 028-68226198