Newly Designed Website, Need Help!!!

[gamefray]

So I just launched my website, http://www.gamefray.com . My web developer coded the website using Ruby on Rails. Now he says that the website will only be able to accommodate in the low thousands in terms of the # of users.

He is also saying, that to have the website be able to handle millions of users, it could cost me an estimated $300,000 !!!!

I don't know what to do. Do I get it redesigned completely?

Is it because there are limits to Ruby on Rails?

Will a redesign in a different code format make it cheaper to do then upgrading?

How much do you think it would cost to make a website that would be able to accomidate millions of users?

I really need help. This website is my dream, but so far I have been nothing but dissapointed. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[alvo]

The limitation of scale is a combination of the hardware you can allocate as well as the overhead of the scripts you're running. You don't have millions of visitors now, so you don't need to have the capacity for that now. You do need to have a plan of how to scale and expand the site as use of it increases. Popular sites didn't always have the hardware and programming they have now, they were added as they were needed. Some had growing pains that showed, others have covered better.

As traffic increases you'll have to keep up with the added server and bandwidth needs. You'll need to add server capacity to keep up with the demand. If you can lower the script overhead you can save on server power, otherwise you'll just need to add bigger/faster or more servers to carry the load.