You need to trash Apache/mod_php. The little PHP I have done has been with Nginx (which it seems you are already using), and FastCGI. It may not be as automag

You need to trash Apache/mod_php. The little PHP I have done has been with Nginx (which it seems you are already using), and FastCGI. It may not be as automagic as mod_php, but since I'm a Rails developer/deployer, I'm used to it. Get a couple of FCGI processes running, set up and nginx upstream to talk to them, and set nginx to direct the traffic to them. Also, you can use something like God or Bluepill (I use the latter) to monitor these processes and reboot them if they lock up. It seems monit would also work well for you. The key thing here is the monitoring, as you can restart processes if they lock, and nginx will just skip over that port and use another process that is not locked/restarting. Finally, if you don't understand any of this, my info is on my profile, and we might be able to help you with Nginx or migrate your site to Rails ;)