AnandTech: A Brief History of Time
by Jason Clark on July 26, 2004 6:52 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
AnandTech 1.0
As most of you know, AnandTech started out as a static HTML site, hosted on GeoCities. Static driven sites are simply HTML based with the content contained within; dynamic driven sites fetch their content from external sources (usually database servers). Back then, static sites were quite popular while dynamic driven web sites were really just starting to catch on. In 1998, at Comdex, we laid out the first dynamic version of AnandTech.com. We decided on Oracle 8i as the database server, and ColdFusion 4.0.1 as the application server. We ran Oracle 8i and ColdFusion on two separate Sun Enterprise servers. We had no issues with Solaris or Oracle, performance-wise, but ColdFusion talking to Oracle was another story.We developed a fairly simple content management solution that allowed us to post content through web forms. This approach to publishing saved a lot of time as content and the editorial staff grew. Articles could be posted from anywhere, and they could updated or removed at will by using our forms-based interface to the database. At that time, the content management engine was not feature-rich; it performed just the basic tasks necessary for the small editorial staff that we had.
The first version of the site was probably the most problematic version of the website (go figure), and the most difficult to maintain. Oracle is a powerful database server, without a doubt, but it lacks the finesse of Microsoft SQL Server and other database servers to some extent. The management UI leaves much to be desired (it doesn't hold a candle to SQL Server Enterprise Manager), and the language, although powerful, is not for everyone.
For ColdFusion to talk to Oracle, we had to use the Oracle Native drivers, which caused us a fair bit of grief and wasted time, as the SQL syntax had to be compatible with Oracle. When the development team consisted (and still consists) of one developer, time is critical. Speaking as the developer, I come from a SQL Server/Sybase world and while it isn't hard to pick up on Oracle's syntax, it is entirely too painful to use when time is so critical, especially when working with dates. Aside from the pain of the syntax, the native drivers also caused some anguish in ColdFusion. ColdFusion was crashing occasionally and caused some unnecessary administrative headaches that needed to be rectified each time it went down. By this time (about a year or less later), it was time to move on to something more stable.
Hardware used in version 1.0
Sun Enterprise 250 w/ 512MB Memory
View version 1.0 of the website
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
67 Comments
View All Comments
FFS - Thursday, July 29, 2004 - link
Clean design it's a half of succes.Look at Google - it is not only that powerfully search made it popular like now, but super clean design too.
The Inquirer is also nice and clean...
I 100% understand that you can't please 'em all :).
But cleanness also will bring more speed... Correct me if I'm wrong
And you still could have a style as well (that's why I mentioned [H]ard|OCP - even thou I'm not such a big fun of black and red)
simms - Thursday, July 29, 2004 - link
We still need a :cookie; emoticon.SlingXShot - Thursday, July 29, 2004 - link
With all these Anandtech versions, anandtech should be an artifical inteligence already. :-DJasonClark - Thursday, July 29, 2004 - link
FFS: Can't please em all :). We're happy with it, i do agree about the white background. It's something we're looking at, but it isnt an easy fix with the css layout.L8r.
FFS - Thursday, July 29, 2004 - link
It is very good article indeed...About speed subjectively it loads slower and slower for me on my FireFox 0.9.2. - but of cause you have benchmarked everything :)
Once I've read on Inq that there are two types of hardware lies: lies and benchmarks :)))
However improving the code for the better one and therefore the speed it is not the only thing about nice web page.
Another thing is design. And I have to admit (again from my point of view) that from version 3 to 5 its mostly regressed.
Especially that gray background covering the article so it's impossible to read during the page loading time, which a pretty long.
PLEASE remove that gray background (keep it white like on v.3)
Tabs on the top - good idea, but bad realization - no clean borders - small fonts e.t.c.
Again news section - even worst one gray on another gray - have you herd about contrast colors? :((
Too be honest best hardware-review site design so far is [H]ard|OCP...
Funny but for me this article sound like excuse for the creating the page, which loads adds very fast but ...(see above)
Is that a hidden feature of .NET We could expect everything from MS (even anti-virus prog :))
Don't get me wrong - I'm also using WinXP, and have the same opinion about it - it is not less stable then Linux in good hands,
although not that stable as Mac OS X even in "simple" hands (again I'm not Apple fun as it could seemed)...
Sorry it was already too much I wrote.
As resume - great team, superb reviews, but sorry - bad web page...
Macaw - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Nice article.The whole .NET framework is pretty extensive. I have some nice things on image-generation from .NET if you want the source. You can use GDI+ from .NET to generate uber cool graphs.
JasonClark - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
SlingXShot, lol jobless? We innovate, so that means writing new code and improving all the time. Sitting on the same code for 10 years doesn't seem very innovative to me. There is ALWAYS room for improvement, thus versions. If people didn't freshen their code we'd still be running windows 3.11 for workgroups, yek.Brickster, we're using SQL Server 2000 on Windows 2003 Enterpise server. That is running on a quad opteron 848 with 8GB of ram and 150 GB Raid 10 array. Can we say overkill :)
SlingXShot - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
JasonClark, just that you have so many version of Anandtech, I guess you need the new versions of software to change code or you would be jobless right?Brickster - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Jason, maybe I missed it, but what database platform are you using with the latest AT 5.0?Thanks again!
Brickster
fbaum - Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - link
Heyyo Jason, thx for the reply, and for qualifying the graphs. Would love to see a fair platform compario but that would be a lot of work and as you pointed out that's not really the point. I'm using VS 2003 on a project now, developing a C# .NET web service to interface with a B2B messaging hub, it's kind of complex, and I'm yearning a bit for the more immediately gratifying CF web development I had on my previous project. As a CF fan I felt compelled to put in my $0.02.
Cheers,
Felix