I'm building a webapp that as a small subset of one of the features allows images to be uploaded. I'm running a lamp stack, with Mongo instead of MySql.
I use a javascript uploader with a php backend to upload the files. The whole framework is under version control though, so I don't want to dump these files anywhere inside my framework, as it would get messy with the version control, and sub-optimal when I eventually migrate the media over to a CDN.
So, my question is - On a VPS, where should I drop these images for now? In some folder external to my framework? In my DB as bson? I've heard Mongo does a decent job handling binary data...
And, as a follow up, if I'm eventually planning on moving the content over to a CDN, how would you recommend structuring my schema for now?
My current plan would be something like the following:
All uploads are named with a unique ID and dropped in an external folder, defined by a globally accessible variable of sorts.
A reference to each images' name is stored in the db.
Is there anything obviously stupid about going about it that way, possibly causing me a scaling headache later?
Here's a summarized specific question, just so this is a little more of an SO friendly question:
Given a Linux, Apache, Mongo, PHP Framework on a VPS, what is the best way to store uploaded images while keeping scalability and speed as the 2 most important factors in deciding on the solution?
