I am really close to finishing up on a project that I've been working on. I have done websites before, but never on my own and never a site that involved user generated data.

I have been reading up on things that should be considered before you go live and I have some questions.

1) Staging... (Deploying updates without affecting users). I'm not really sure what this would entail, since I'm sure that any type of update would affect users in some way. Does this mean some type of temporary downtime for every update? can somebody please explain this and a solution to this as well.

2) Limits... I'm using the Kohana framework and I'm using the Auth module for logging users in. I was wondering if this already has some type of limit (on login attempts) built in, and if not, what would be the best way to implement this. (save attempts in database, cookie, etc.). If this is not whats meant by limits, can somebody elaborate.

3) Caching... Like I said, this is my first site built around user content. Considering that, should I cache it?

4) Back Ups... How often should I backup my (MySQL) database, and how should I back it up (MySQL export?).

The site is currently up, yet not finished, if anybody wants to look at it and see if something pops out to you that should be looked at/fixed. Clashing Thoughts.

If there is anything else I overlooked, thats not already in the list linked to above, please let me know.

Thanks.