Article Site PHP, MySQL Optimization

I bought it a large Article Directory site for testing a new service I run, but to my surprise, this test site has steadily gained more traffic and actually started making a bit of money. However, as traffic increases I have realized that the article script that the site runs on poorly written and is very inefficient. The problem is, every time the site gets a nice traffic spike (say 3,000 or 4,000 page views per day) the site runs starts running super slow and every day or two the mysql server crashes. Managing the new articles submissions that come in becomes impossibly slow so new articles are left unchecked by me. This site is on a shared hosting plan that is pushed to the limit, I even tried moving it to a dedicated server I own and have about 6 of my other sites on but it ground the dedicated server to a halt when it hit 10K page views per day. My current host says there are many inefficient ‘slow’ queries causing problems when traffic spikes and that I should get the site optimized. This was a prepackaged article software product that apparently is not very good. What I need done: I need an HTML, PHP, MySQL expert to go through the site and learn how it works and then optimize it so it works as fast and efficiently and does not grind to a halt when traffic picks up. I would like this site to be able to easily handle 10,000 to 20,000 page views per day. Other things needed: Do not let article submitters put html code in WYSIWYG article submission area so html code does not appear in the articles. Occasionally, articles get corrupted links that I need to manually check for during my article approval process. Something needs to be put in place to make sure links in articles submitted have valid HTML links linking to outside the site. ## Deliverables 1) Complete and fully-functional working program(s) in executable form as well as complete source code of all work done. 2) Deliverables must be in ready-to-run condition, as follows (depending on the nature of the deliverables): a) For web sites or other server-side deliverables intended to only ever exist in one place in the Buyer's environment--Deliverables must be installed by the Seller in ready-to-run condition in the Buyer's environment. b) For all others including desktop software or software the buyer intends to distribute: A software installation package that will install the software in ready-to-run condition on the platform(s) specified in this bid request. 3) All deliverables will be considered "work made for hire" under U.S. Copyright law. Buyer will receive exclusive and complete copyrights to all work purchased. (No GPL, GNU, 3rd party components, etc. unless all copyright ramifications are explained AND AGREED TO by the buyer on the site per the coder's Seller Legal Agreement). ## Platform Apache Hosted MySQL Database PHP coded