Open source tools, cheap bandwidth, and the availability of immediate revenue streams through the likes of Google AdSense, have lowered the barriers of entry for developers of new community-based web sites. But the key to a successful startup bootstrapped on its CEO’s credit card lies in early implementations of code. This session will serve as a case study of Digg’s technical origins and how the concept was executed on a minimal budget. The presentation will feature interesting anecdotes from Digg’s senior software engineer and co-founder, Owen Byrne, as well as successful practices that can be implemented by other startup companies.

In a month and a half, Digg went from BETA to fully operational status. The social news site now has more than 600,000 registered users, and receives 4,000+ story submissions a day.

Initially, Digg was one Linux server, running Apache 1.3 and PHP 4.x. for MySQL 4.0 and all myisam tables, including MySQL full-text search. After a variety of small open source packages to fill in bits of functionalit (ImageMagick, Ispell/Spellerpages, prototype/scriptaculous, etc.), Digg grew fairly quickly. Before too long that one server became two servers, myisam become innodb, and then the team moved to Debian. Now at three servers, Digg staffs a database administrator, started using memcached, and has moved to PHP 5.x.

Byrne’s presentation will draw on his years of experience with the tools mentioned above that can be used in the development of a successful site. It will also cover how sites can generate greater traction through implementing dynamic pages, innovative site architecture, and an infrastructure that allows for quickly scaling operations.