Web Server Load Testing

I have been trying to test how much load my server/website would take in terms of concurrent connections.

After looking at a lot of expensive services to achieve this task, I came across a great site called Load Impact – They offer a free stress test for your website which will simulate up to 50 concurrent visitors – there are also payed for services they offer which can simulate up to 5000 concurrent users.

After testing two of my websites, I found that Nikki-fundraising could take about 30 concurrent visitors before it crashed, and Shareworld could take about 40-45 concurrent visitors. After doing these stress tests, I came to the conclusion that it will depend greatly on how much data needs to be provided in order to view a particular site – after taking the advice of Websiteoptimization.com I managed to greatly increase the speed of Nikki-Fundraising by removing alot of styling-images that we didnt really need – including changing the visitor counter to text rather than an image – as the amount of objects that need to be downloaded by visitors puts more strain on the server – since doing this, the site has been able to take more concurrent visitors!!