Server management – Spryciarze.pl

Hostersi managed Spryciarze’s server infrastructure, the greatest Polish social network service with video guides.
 

Project description

Hostersi manages the servers of Poland’s largest social network service with video guides – Spryciarze.pl. Hostersi advised during the creation of key technological solutions for the website, performing at particular stages of its increasing series of works optimising the effectiveness of system, therefore infl uencing the speed of its website’s performance. They have suggested distributed server architecture, making use of locations in Poland and France, which increased the service’s reliability. If there are any problems with the work of the servers, they are all solved within 24 hours, all year round. Thanks to this, the service is constantly working and the Spryciarze.pl website is available for users and visitors.

Spryciarze.pl is the largest video guide website in Poland, which consists of more than 10 thousand short movies with advice from various areas of expertise. Users who visit the website create their own videos and send them to the website?s Spryciarze.pl owners for comments and advice.

Every day the website publishes about 20 new video-guidelines. Within a month the website was visited 3 million times. Currently the service has 400 thousand registered users, who arrange databases with a volume of 12 million records Every day the number of fans increases. At the beginning of August 2010 the service registered 1,6 million unique users. Hostersi designed the architecture of a distributed system customized to the needs of www.sprzyciarze.pl

Challenge

The website Spryciarze.pl has been popular from the very beginning. Every day more and more Internet users have been visiting. Within a very short period of time, from the startup phase, the website was visited by one million users per month. As a result of the rapid increase in popularity, some problems occurred with the website’s loading speed and stability of the service www.spryciarze.pl. Small capacity of the website made it impossible to serve all the visitors.

Because of the increase in capacity, previous server solutions were insuffi cient. A service visited 3 million times per month needs a dedicated server platform with an impressive effi ciency. Spryciarze.pl is the largest video guide Internet service and an example of a start-up which has succeeded spectacularly in the Polish market. Now the creators of the website – as talented businessmen – are often interviewed by the most prestigious media in Poland. The airing of TV shows with the participation of Spryciarze.pl’s representatives in prime time always leads to a large increase in users. This makes it necessary to ensure a temporary increase of server resources. As a social network service, Spryciarze.pl has a large database of private data. This is why it is essential for the business to be consistent with the European Union’s rigorous rules of private data protection.

 
Implementation

At the beginning of our cooperation a project team was created. Its members are programmers and technical advisers of Hostersi. During the diagnostic works Hostersi discovered the reason for such slow service performance and instability: the insuffi ciency of CAKE framework usage at such a large number of simultaneous visits. Based on recommendations presented by Hostersi’s technical experts, Spryciarze.pl?s programmers have made suitable changes in service code directed towards replacing the CAKE framework with a clear PHP code in places essential to the site’s efficiency. Hostersi advised during the creation of a dedicated system for hosting static files containing videos.

Currently the video hosting platform contains 10 thousands guidevideos. Until now these videos have been viewed 142 million times. As a result of an agreement between Spryciarze.pl representatives, Hostersi ensures temporary broadening of server resources, adequate to the increased number of users, every time TV shows encouraging viewers to visit www.spryciarze.pl. As part of the service package Hostersi ensures backup in the Hostersi Data Center, which measures up to the standards defined by the European Union laws regarding privacy protection.

Business benefits

Efficient optimisation of the website enabled us to overcome the barrier of development quickly and still enables its constant increase and service for all users. A dedicated server platform guarantees that users get the highest availability of the service. Competences, knowledge and well chosen solutions of Hostersi’s technical team contributed to the success of Spryciarze.pl, which can be measured by the millions of visitors per month.

Client testimonial

Rapid increasing the number of registered users has been beyond our wildest expectations. As a result we had to undertake determined actions leading to the optimisation of our service’s functionality. On the basis of very positive experiences gained during cooperation in server management, we did not hesitate to choose HOSTERSI as a partner in the process of improving service performance and increasing of the possibilities of its development. The professional knowledge and many years of experience in administration of databases with complicated structures of Hostersi’s employees have contributed to an increase in service performance and made the possibilities of its development more flexible.

Marcin Radziwoń, President of the Board of Spryciarze.pl

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