What software/hardware are you using to run the site?

The Software

The first thing we suggest is reading the IMDb History to find out more about how this all started and how we have arrived at our present point.

IMDb began as a set of scripts and data files which had to be run on a UNIX system. These scripts still work and are available for download. When the WWW was invented we created a website in Perl which allowed anyone with a browser to access our database without having to know how to download and install anything. We do not distribute this software.

Our entire website and nearly all of our internal-use tools are created with "open source" software such as Apache, and the usual collection of GNU and Linux utilities.

The software that runs the "database" itself was completely developed in-house.

Note: For security reasons we will not disclose any additional information.

The Hardware

We run Linux on Intel-based hardware.

Again, for security reasons we will not disclose any additional information.

Database Statistics

If you would like a detailed breakdown of the variety of data we have in the database, you can visit our database statistics page. We do not disclose website traffic figures to the public, however you can see that Alexa rates us as one of the top 100 websites.

Running Your Own Copy of IMDb

IMDb stays true to its Internet roots and core principles, thus we make available files and software to construct part of the database on your own system (for private, non-commercial use only). For more information on how to do this and the supported operating systems, please visit our alternate interfaces page.

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