QuoteWe decided our customary Rails + Varnish setup left too much room for error. Although Varnish's grace and saint modes make some allowances for struggling applications, we decided it was too risky to lean entirely on an ephemeral cache for an evening where seconds of downtime matter.
Instead, we decided to center our app on the simplest of all caching strategies: the flat file.
http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/using-flat-files-so-elections-dont-break-your-server/
Can I ask the stupid, but obvious question:
How the hell do you maintain flat files without it being a nightmare?
well I guess they can be created from any type of CMS, they're just stored and retrieved flat?
>>nightmare
The old original Gossamer Threads directory script kept everything in flat files and hierarchy of folders. Worked okay for low traffic site.