boost

There is a separate "primary" site (in another system [NOT Drupal]), and the Drupal site has two servers with one database on one of those servers connected to both Drupal instances. Our problem is with the two Drupal servers and DNS (domain/subdomain) settings to manage them.

One instance has a minute-by-minute CRON job running to keep the other in-synch, with rsync. Only one of those servers is open to login and edit with a subdomain pointing to it directly on the network. The other server has a read-only user setup for the database connection, just as a precaution.

Boost is nearing RC 3, and my estimate is the release after this will be 1.0. As such I'm looking for ideas for the next version, 2.0.

Last night I (finally) updated my (ultra-simple) personal website to 6.0, and while I was at it I decided to try out some caching ideas that had been brewing in the back of my mind for a while.

Though all caching strategies have their pitfalls and drawbacks, the idea I wanted to try -- combining Boost and Memcache -- seems like a real live-wire. However, if it can be made to work, I think it might offer some significant advantages.

As seen on Planet Drupal, the recent article Improving Drupal's Performance with the Boost Module for the UN's Millennium Campaign (October 23rd, 2008) describes how a Drupal site successfully managed a very high traffic situation. They achieved this with "one enormously helpful Drupal module, called Boost", and "some fine tuning".

Is anyone using Boost with the rewrite conditions in an Apache conf vs. .htaccess? Boost works fine by default, but when I move the rerwite rules into apache, it does not.

I made the logical changes that I had to make from to the normal drupal rewrite by adding a slash before 'cache' on each rewrite rule.

Here's what I got.. If you have any suggestions, or could post your rewrite rules that work, I'd appreciate it.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^GET$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !DRUPAL_UID