7 ms·

Scaling Wix to 60M Users – From Monolith to Microservices

90 points by movielala 11y ago

pluma 11y ago
I'm amazed they never changed their name. Even after entering the German market. There's absolutely no way to refer to them in a proper business context in German. For the uninitiated: wixen is a common misspelling of the slang term "wichsen" meaning "to masturbate". To a German speaker they might as well have named the company "wank".
wichsen 11y ago
Why is Pluma's comment [1] marked as dead? > I'm amazed they never changed their name. Even after entering > the German market. There's absolutely no way to refer to them > in a proper business context in German. > > For the uninitiated: wixen is a common misspelling of the > slang term "wichsen" meaning "to masturbate". To a German > speaker they might as well have named the company "wank". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9627716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9627716
zathros 11y ago
Lots of dead comments here.. http://i.imgur.com/3xomH6n.png http://i.imgur.com/3xomH6n.png
- leesalminen 11y ago
  It's interesting that someone would remove that comment.
  - detaro 11y ago
    Since they were [dead] pretty immediately I'd guess something automatic hit them. That said, I think they overdramatise the issue. Yes, the naming is unfortunate, but it's not that much of an issue.
    - pluma 11y ago
      The naming is unfortunate, period. I'd be surprised if any German business uses them at all.
- pluma 11y ago
  Considering that's (AFAICT) my only comment that ever ended up dead, I'm guessing it's a word-based block. Which is amazing considering Wix itself would likely trigger the same block if HN were German-speaking.
buckbova 11y ago
> When Wix started, we had a Flash-based product—both the Editor and the created sites were Flash applications—which turned into a second monolith (especially the Editor application). These flash sites were ugly, even for the time. I'm amazed the company has done so well. In the beginning I'd expect it'd be easy to scale. User would create a flash based site with the tool and server would host that file.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  The company has done so well because they essentially hijack your content. With their flash site shit, once your content was uploaded into their "site creator" you cannot get it back under any circumstances. People gave Wix a try and a year later, when they wanted to switch providers because Wix is so awful and slow, they found that none of their content could be retrieved, and would be deleted unless they paid for another year, and another, and so on.
sinzone 11y ago
You should look into the open source Kong for managing your microservices http://getkong.org http://getkong.org - Github repo https://github.com/mashape/kong https://github.com/mashape/kong
- jessedhillon 11y ago
  Can you explain what Kong does and why you would use it? I'm having a tough time finding anything of substance on the website which talks about why Kong exists
  - sinzone 11y ago
    It's the 2nd main call to action in the middle of the page: http://cl.ly/image/230t2d0H403a http://cl.ly/image/230t2d0H403a
    - jessedhillon 11y ago
      Yes, I guess it wasn't clear from my comment, but I have read their site. Assuming you're being sincere, this doesn't mean anything to me: http://imgur.com/BZz409G http://imgur.com/BZz409G
      - sinzone 11y ago
        Well.. to understand the value you need to have a bit of knowledge on how microservice architectures work and why an API Gateway (like Kong, which is the most popular OSS solution for that) is a fundamental part of it. ;) I suggest to start from here to get up to speed: http://microservices.io/patterns/apigateway.html http://microservices.io/patterns/apigateway.html
      - icebraining 11y ago
        From a cursory look, it's a set of Lua scripts that augment Nginx with features like authentication and such, so that you can avoid implementing them in the actual services.
  - 11y ago
philfrasty 11y ago
Would be interesting to see how their German-speaking user-base compares to the rest of the world. („Wix“ = to fap)
- kitsune_ 11y ago
  I don't know how offensive 'to wank', 'to jack off' or 'to fap' are in English, but in German 'wichsen' or 'wixen' is a very coarse and vulgar word, compared to tamer forms like 'runterholen', 'masturbieren' or 'onanieren'.
krylon 11y ago
This reminds of that passage in William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive where Mona meets this guy whose job is to check if company's name or brand or product name or whatever isn't an insult in Japanese or something.
- mhomde 11y ago
  Yes, if only Honda had done that with their Fitta model here in Sweden
simonebrunozzi 11y ago
Apologies, they actually have also their own Data Centers, and what I wrote earlier (below) is wrong. Assuming that this is what they mean, "3 data centers + 2 clouds (Google, AWS)" -> The "+" should be substituted with "across" -> 3 data centers across 2 clouds (Google, AWS)
alfl23 11y ago
Not sure this is really an engineering success to be shared. 400 people, of which 350 are handling Spring configuration probably. Over bloated, massive effort, with 0 innovation and 10 steps backwards, and still a very slow product. Happy you are profitable, but tech talks should be left to people who truly know what they were doing. Read Twitter's scalability story for reference.
- iyn 11y ago
  Sure, there are players that are way ahead of them, but for me the article was interesting nonetheless, there is always something new to learn. For me, the most interesting thing was a non-technical issue - how they organize people into "companies" and "guilds". Not sure if this is the most efficient way, but I think that this helps with "knowledge distributions" (not sure how to call this) across the company - this way more people know what is going on in different teams. Re Twitter: I've found this article: http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-twitter-uses-to-deal-with-150m-active-users.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-tw... but this is from 2013, not sure if there's something new.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jacques_chester 11y ago
  I work in Pivotal Labs, a consultancy best known for RoR and mobile apps (and XP + lean product & design). Right now I'm working on an app that was, for tedious reasons, downgraded from Spring Boot to Spring 3.2, then re-upgraded. I'm finding that Spring Boot and some of the more recent libraries (eg Spring Data REST) make a lot of stuff very tolerable. I never have to touch XML. A few annotations and bang, my work is done. Disclaimer: the Spring team mostly works for the same company as I do -- Pivotal -- but in a distant division from mine.

90 points by movielala 11y ago

pluma 11y ago

I'm amazed they never changed their name. Even after entering the German market. There's absolutely no way to refer to them in a proper business context in German. For the uninitiated: wixen is a common misspelling of the slang term "wichsen" meaning "to masturbate". To a German speaker they might as well have named the company "wank".

wichsen 11y ago

Why is Pluma's comment [1] marked as dead? > I'm amazed they never changed their name. Even after entering > the German market. There's absolutely no way to refer to them > in a proper business context in German. > > For the uninitiated: wixen is a common misspelling of the > slang term "wichsen" meaning "to masturbate". To a German > speaker they might as well have named the company "wank". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9627716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9627716

zathros 11y ago

Lots of dead comments here.. http://i.imgur.com/3xomH6n.png http://i.imgur.com/3xomH6n.png

leesalminen 11y ago
It's interesting that someone would remove that comment.
- detaro 11y ago
  Since they were [dead] pretty immediately I'd guess something automatic hit them. That said, I think they overdramatise the issue. Yes, the naming is unfortunate, but it's not that much of an issue.
  - pluma 11y ago
    The naming is unfortunate, period. I'd be surprised if any German business uses them at all.
pluma 11y ago
Considering that's (AFAICT) my only comment that ever ended up dead, I'm guessing it's a word-based block. Which is amazing considering Wix itself would likely trigger the same block if HN were German-speaking.

buckbova 11y ago

> When Wix started, we had a Flash-based product—both the Editor and the created sites were Flash applications—which turned into a second monolith (especially the Editor application). These flash sites were ugly, even for the time. I'm amazed the company has done so well. In the beginning I'd expect it'd be easy to scale. User would create a flash based site with the tool and server would host that file.

fapjacks 11y ago
The company has done so well because they essentially hijack your content. With their flash site shit, once your content was uploaded into their "site creator" you cannot get it back under any circumstances. People gave Wix a try and a year later, when they wanted to switch providers because Wix is so awful and slow, they found that none of their content could be retrieved, and would be deleted unless they paid for another year, and another, and so on.

sinzone 11y ago

You should look into the open source Kong for managing your microservices http://getkong.org http://getkong.org - Github repo https://github.com/mashape/kong https://github.com/mashape/kong

jessedhillon 11y ago
Can you explain what Kong does and why you would use it? I'm having a tough time finding anything of substance on the website which talks about why Kong exists
- sinzone 11y ago
  It's the 2nd main call to action in the middle of the page: http://cl.ly/image/230t2d0H403a http://cl.ly/image/230t2d0H403a
  - jessedhillon 11y ago
    Yes, I guess it wasn't clear from my comment, but I have read their site. Assuming you're being sincere, this doesn't mean anything to me: http://imgur.com/BZz409G http://imgur.com/BZz409G
    - sinzone 11y ago
      Well.. to understand the value you need to have a bit of knowledge on how microservice architectures work and why an API Gateway (like Kong, which is the most popular OSS solution for that) is a fundamental part of it. ;) I suggest to start from here to get up to speed: http://microservices.io/patterns/apigateway.html http://microservices.io/patterns/apigateway.html
    - icebraining 11y ago
      From a cursory look, it's a set of Lua scripts that augment Nginx with features like authentication and such, so that you can avoid implementing them in the actual services.
- 11y ago

philfrasty 11y ago

Would be interesting to see how their German-speaking user-base compares to the rest of the world. („Wix“ = to fap)

kitsune_ 11y ago
I don't know how offensive 'to wank', 'to jack off' or 'to fap' are in English, but in German 'wichsen' or 'wixen' is a very coarse and vulgar word, compared to tamer forms like 'runterholen', 'masturbieren' or 'onanieren'.

krylon 11y ago

This reminds of that passage in William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive where Mona meets this guy whose job is to check if company's name or brand or product name or whatever isn't an insult in Japanese or something.

mhomde 11y ago
Yes, if only Honda had done that with their Fitta model here in Sweden

simonebrunozzi 11y ago

Apologies, they actually have also their own Data Centers, and what I wrote earlier (below) is wrong. Assuming that this is what they mean, "3 data centers + 2 clouds (Google, AWS)" -> The "+" should be substituted with "across" -> 3 data centers across 2 clouds (Google, AWS)

alfl23 11y ago

Not sure this is really an engineering success to be shared. 400 people, of which 350 are handling Spring configuration probably. Over bloated, massive effort, with 0 innovation and 10 steps backwards, and still a very slow product. Happy you are profitable, but tech talks should be left to people who truly know what they were doing. Read Twitter's scalability story for reference.

iyn 11y ago
Sure, there are players that are way ahead of them, but for me the article was interesting nonetheless, there is always something new to learn. For me, the most interesting thing was a non-technical issue - how they organize people into "companies" and "guilds". Not sure if this is the most efficient way, but I think that this helps with "knowledge distributions" (not sure how to call this) across the company - this way more people know what is going on in different teams. Re Twitter: I've found this article: http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-twitter-uses-to-deal-with-150m-active-users.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-tw... but this is from 2013, not sure if there's something new.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jacques_chester 11y ago
I work in Pivotal Labs, a consultancy best known for RoR and mobile apps (and XP + lean product & design). Right now I'm working on an app that was, for tedious reasons, downgraded from Spring Boot to Spring 3.2, then re-upgraded. I'm finding that Spring Boot and some of the more recent libraries (eg Spring Data REST) make a lot of stuff very tolerable. I never have to touch XML. A few annotations and bang, my work is done. Disclaimer: the Spring team mostly works for the same company as I do -- Pivotal -- but in a distant division from mine.