As someone who as architected web serving clusters for some of Canada's largest ISPs and companies I can tell you first hand that the Apache web server is the last web server that you would want to use in a high performance environment. Check out Zeus, http://www.zeus.com, not only can it handle 4 to 5 times the amount of connections per second as Apache it also has virtually linear scalability on multi processor machines. Zeus also sports a central administration system that allows you to administer an entire cluster from one web interface.

Paul

http://www.zeus.com/purchase/ lists the coist of the apache server as being very expensive. £11/1200 or so.

Dont know much about this site, but if its anything like any other HW site, then spending ther above ammount on a server is out of the question, when a product like apache will do a very comparable job for free.

Spending on the server HW is required as this at least kills any stability concerns. Also it would go agains the spirit of a site like this, unless they HAD to opt for some proprierty solution, like the above.