) Stress-test your app by simulating loads of users performing realistic actions on your site. See what breaks first. Optimise that. Start again. ) Offload you

) Stress-test your app by simulating loads of users performing realistic actions on your site. See what breaks first. Optimise that. Start again. ) Offload your static media to a CDN. The cheapest and easiest way to do this is to copy your CSS/images/javascript to Amazon's S3, then change your HTML to reference the new location. ) Put a caching server in front of your current server (which then becomes the "application server"). ) Watch Jacob Kaplan-Moss' (one of the core Django devs) Deploying Django workshop [1]. While it is obviously focused on Django, there are loads of useful language-agnostic tips on deploying web/caching/DB servers. [1] http://ontwik.com/python/django-deployment-workshop-by-jacob-kaplan-moss/ http://ontwik.com/python/django-deployment-workshop-by-jacob... Edited to add: Forgot the obligatory "don't optimise too early" thing. The time you spend making sure your app can sustain a million uniques per day might be better spent elsewhere.