9 million hits/day with 120 megs RAM
Blogs really don't need a PHP, Rails, or anything backend. It's static content.<p>Here's how I think blogging should work:<p>1. Visit a web app where you create your blog post, add pictures, use your rich text editor, that sort of thing.<p>2. Click the "Publish" button, which generates static HTML and runs any other processing like tag generation or pngcrush.<p>3. Your static HTML gets pushed out to some server that does the hosting for you. It could even be one of those really cheap shared hosting providers.<p>If you really want comments, let someone like Disqus or Intense Debate handle it. Pretty much any dynamic feature you need can be outsourced.