Mini-guide to scaling your app: Step 1. Measure, measure, measure: response time, page load time, query time Step 2. Identify bottlenecks: Why isn't your pag

Mini-guide to scaling your app: Step 1. Measure, measure, measure: response time, page load time, query time Step 2. Identify bottlenecks: Why isn't your page load snappy? Too much JS? Round-trip to DB is killing you? Your mongrels are overloaded? Tip: Use YSlow for frontend measurements and take most of its advice Step 3. Fix bottlenecks: Lots of techniques to fix faster frontend performance, start with YSlow above. Architectural and backend issues can be solved with a combination of hardware (load balancers, more web boxes, more db boxes) and software (better caching strategies, evolve your DB architecture, break up your application into smaller micro-apps that scale independently) Step 4: Go to step 1 and keep at it. I'd have to say that if you're not doing Step 1, you're going to fail now, or eventually. As one of my first mentors taught me: "You cannot improve, what you don't measure"