On the front end:<div>1) Ensure that your "landing page" is lean & mean (as Matti pointed out). Landing pages are used in big corporate marketing blitzes specifically for this reason. This weekend will provide a perfect case study & examples as Super Bowl commercial campaigns are a perfect example of getting "slashdotted."</div>
<div><br></div><div>2) CSS Sprites all the way. What sprites allow you to do is condense all the images on your page into one image. Essentially, saving you tons of server overhead by exponentially reducing the number of HTTP requests. Here's some resouces:</div>
<div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(computer_graphics)">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(computer_graphics)</a></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><a href="http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/css-sprites/">http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/css-sprites/</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>On the back end:</div><div>1) I'd also suggest Amazon EC2 for your infrastructure (as Matti pointed out) as you can easily adjust your needs on-the-fly. Our friend, Eric Hammond, is definitely the guy to talk to about that, though: <a href="http://alestic.com/">http://alestic.com/</a></div>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><br></div><div>2) Depending on what content & how much you're serving, you might want to look into a good Content Delivery Network (CDN). While Akamai is the long-time standard, I just found out tonight, at UUASC, that Ilan Rabinovitch is now working at their competitor, Edgecast. So you might want to ping him on this possible solution.</div>
<div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><a href="http://www.edgecast.com/">http://www.edgecast.com/</a></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><a href="http://www.akamai.com/">http://www.akamai.com/</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>3) Optimizing MySQL queries for maximum efficiency might also be something to look into, again, depending on your loadout.</div><div><br></div><div>4) Apache: Have you looked into the MPM_prefork module? If I'm understanding your needs correctly, it sounds like it might be useful:</div>
<div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/prefork.html">http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/prefork.html</a></div><div><br></div><div>QA/Testing:</div>
<div>1) Ensure that it's properly tested for potential performance issues, like memory leaks.</div><div><br></div><div>2) Load Testing is going to be your key cog, though, imho (& hopefully first stop). Ensure that the QA folks have a complete set of test cases that cover any potential gotcha. Things like testing different load balancing setups might prove very beneficial. Specifically, though, I'd have load testing cases for all potential scenarios: more heavy users than interactive users, a 50/50 split, more interactive users than heavy users, etc. Being a rabid fan of Test Driven Development (TDD), I can tell you that this is an area where you usually get the most bang for your buck.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Hope that helps, Claude.</div><div>--miguel</div>