How many MySQL queries should I limit myself to on a page? PHP / MySQL

Question

Okay, so I'm sure plenty of you have built crazy database intensive pages...

I am building a page that I'd like to pull all sorts of unrelated database information from. Here are some sample different queries for this one page:

• article content and info
• IF the author is a registered user, their info
• UPDATE the article's view counter
• retrieve comments on the article
• retrieve information for the authors of the comments
• if the reader of the article is signed in, query for info on them
• etc...

I know these are basically going to be pretty lightning quick, and that I could combine some; but I wanted to make sure that this isn't abnormal?

How many fairly normal and un-heavy queries would you limit yourself to on a page?

Answer 1

As many as needed, but not more.

Really: don't worry about optimization (right now). Build it first, measure performance second, and IFF there is a performance problem somewhere, then start with optimization.

Otherwise, you risk spending a lot of time on optimizing something that doesn't need optimization.