FYI, I just changed http://susning.nu/ from plain old CGI to FastCGI and it really makes a change. This is a UseModWiki, just like the old pre-PHP Wikipedias. Plain wiki pages used to load in 2.5 seconds on average. Now they load in less than 0.8 seconds (searches and recent changes take longer).
Q: Why don't I change to the Wikipedia PHP software? A: I've invested too much of my own hacking into the UseModWiki script to abandon it quite yet. And converting to FastCGI turned out to be a piece of cake.
Q: Why don't I run mod_perl instead of stinking old FastCGI technology? A: I use a web hotel with Linux shell login accounts and they don't do mod_perl. I think the reason is that scripts run under mod_perl cannot change user ID to each customer.
Q: Does the site get any traffic? A: It had 180,000 page views in April from 40,000 unique IP addresses, growing at 40 % per month. Many hits are referrals from Google.
I, too, can vouch for FastCGI. We run tons of stuff through it on Bomis. It's the bomb. Of course, changing Wikipedia from php/mysql to perl fastcgi/mysql would be a major undertaking at this point, and reports from around the web suggest strongly that php is fast, particularly when persistency is used (as we do).
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I, too, can vouch for FastCGI. We run tons of stuff through it on Bomis. It's the bomb. Of course, changing Wikipedia from php/mysql to perl fastcgi/mysql would be a major undertaking at this point, and reports from around the web suggest strongly that php is fast, particularly when persistency is used (as we do).
FastCGI would be a step back for Wikipedia. PHP is better. FastCGI was an improvement for me, because I was running old CGI.
Plain old CGI is 1994. FastCGI is 1996/1998. PHP3 is 1999. PHP4 is 2000. - or something like that.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org