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For context I run pinboard.in, a bookmarking site.

1. Using PHP rather than Rails or Django. It meant having to hand-code simple things like form handling, but resulted in a peppy site that can handle sudden spikes in traffic. The initial investment in writing boilerplate and laying out the code has really paid off now that I need to tune and add features.

2. Sphinx. Made the site searchable with minimal configuration, and allowed me to move certain queries out of MySQL without having to set up caching. It's nice to have caching as a luxury to make the site even snappier, rather than an essential prerequisite for usability.

People have to pay to use our site, and the main thing that sets us apart from our many free competitors is speed, speed, speed. That fact has loomed large over our technical choices.