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General discussion

Need help on designing macroblogging site

Mar 26, 2014 10:44PM PDT

We need suggestions from some programmers with background in coding.We are planning to build a macro rather than micro blogging site similar to twitter.The site is temporarily called MeetMega(http://meetme.ga).

Problem faced:
1.too much similarity.Why would anyone switch to our website just for increasing tweet size(1000 chars)

2. Would we merge facebook and twitter and is there any issue(legal or practical) e.g. like, pages, tweete etc.

3. How to scale the website as more than 5000 visitors, the site starts to lag using mysql, ngix(apache)

this is link
Your comments would be highly appreciated

Discussion is locked

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Just one.
Mar 27, 2014 1:45AM PDT

I see I can't get around that site without revealing email and more. So all I can see is the sign up page. May have folk turned off from the beginning.

As to SQL speed I rarely see any speed drop with 100K records so I'd talk to your DBA about your code. I'll note the classic goof is SELECT *. While they teach that in classes, you get to unlearn it later.
Bob

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Thanks for your comment
Mar 28, 2014 2:06PM PDT

1. This was done in order to prevent spam .

2. Yeah we use MySQL but the problem faced is more towards the slow response from server as it gets overloaded with multiple requests and simultaneous cron=jobs to check any new update.Towards queries, we have used prepared statement to execute and retrieve results using for loop.Yeah , we are still in a classical goof of select *, as we are still university grads.
For scaling, purpose now we are working on using a script to load balance equally on all our VPS's whenever there is overload on one.However some of our friends are suggesting Cloud Hosting options like Amazon EC2.Can you guide us about that prospects.

And thanks for your kind comments

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Select *
Mar 29, 2014 4:32AM PDT

When you get that corrected you may find some relief.

As to cloud hosting, a lot changed over the past few weeks so my advice is out of date. Wow, a loaf of bread lasts longer than this area of knowledge.
Bob

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I tried to visit the site
Mar 28, 2014 1:19AM PDT

but it didn't load for me.

Re: question #1 and #2, if you've already decided on your business model and are in the planning stage, I don't think it's helpful to have these doubts. These are precisely the questions you'd get from a user or investor, so if you, the creator of the product, doesn't have the answers, who will?

First, you need to come up with an edge (or three or four edges) and then test your hypothesis. For example, you think an edge is more characters. I would survey a few hundred people, in the demographic you are targeting, using well-phrased questions, to assess whether there is a need for that.

I would also not look at where the world is today, but where the world is headed. Don't create a product that will slightly emulate what's already out there, but think about struggles you've run into personally when using X or Y service. Mobile is definitely a factor today, but I'm sure there are capabilities and features that can take even that to the next level. This will require some brainstorming, but there's always something to improve.

Second, you'll want to be sure there are no legal issue before you start with the product. Using a term like "tweets" on your site, I think that's shaky territory, but a term like "pages" has been around for a long time. I'm not a lawyer, but I recommend checking with one, just to be sure. You could also just go with it and ask for forgiveness later, but just know that it will come up at some point.

Re: question #3, you'll want an environment that can scale and potentially introduce load balancing. Definitely look into optimizing your MySQL and look into application-independent caching systems (like Varnish). As your starting out, you may also want to look at services like CloudFlare or Google's Page Speed service to see if they can make a difference.

~Sovereign

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Thanks for your feedback
Mar 28, 2014 2:27PM PDT

We are sorry that site couldn't load for you.It is still in its seeding phase and we are glad that you still gave your insights about project.

1. Yeah we are not trying to make different sites like m.xyz.com .Instead we are trying to push more into smartdevices by using/testing Bootstrap ,Ukit /JQuery mobile to name a few framework.We all know that we are heading into a future, where everything would be mobile, on tip,fast, responsive and user friendly.Thats what is our prior concern.

2. We consulted few firms and they were sure that likes and pages are there since the beginning whereas they were unsure about large messages being abbrevated as tweet (So, we renamed that to reposted/psted) to avoid any legal issues.

3.Thanks, for recommending Content Delievery Networks like Cloudflare.They can definitely boost the page load time and we are also planning to combine all css and js into a single file to avoid multiple requests.Also, lazy load appears as a proportionate solution for faster access times.