Re: get_userdata(): should I be worried about too many db queries?
@Jacoby who wrote “I’m curious how many queries other social network sites use on a single page load.”
I was too, and saw that it varies widely — from about 40 queries per page for the commercial SocialEngine script (which now includes Zend fragment and full page caching, very nice) to the mind-blowing 1.364 queries just to show the Dashboard on Elgg as reported in Elgg’s own forum. As for Drupal, it makes a similar number of queries per page as BuddyPress (of course it depends on the number of modules, etc) and with that level it is such a mess that Jesse Farmer, the main developer for Popsugar (the most trafficked social network built on Drupal) abandoned the project and wrote on a developers forum that Drupal is impossible to scale and “it would have been easier to start from scratch”. And bear in mind that Popsugar got $5 million from Sequoia Capital, so they have plenty of money to “throw hardware” at the problem.
@DJPaul, who said “Your post is not very constructive as you haven’t suggested a particular page on a site which interested developers could look into – saying that the entire thing needs attention may be valid, but we need to start from somewhere.”
I am not a coder, so how about starting here: I will pay $500 dollars to the person or team that reduces the number of queries on the main Buddypress blog page to around 20 (which is the normal number for a WordPress blog running the default theme). I am ready to escrow this money on the site of their preference.
