Optimising PHP script and database to use low resources of the server

Hi We have a news website which recieve hight traffic ( usually more than 1500 users online at the same time) in the last months the site suffer from alot of downtimes because of reaching max users online , we hired alot of freelancers which configured the server and tried alot of settings , but problem still persists . here are some suggestions and observations which we received during the last month : -sometime we have alot of max connection for this reason the site dont want to respond - Your database is quite large hence your server can not handle that much unless you have bigger server. Optimization will help somewhat but it can not replacing lack of hardware in server. - data base is growing and ur using FULLTEXT site with more than 1Gb size and should have solution to let server handle queries - I have found that the site seems to be responsive when first restarted, but then quickly becomes unresponsive. The page seems to load, but never seems to finish. I believe there may be an issue in regards to the clients never disconnecting, as they are expecting further data. Eventually, the number of available connections is all used up, and no further connections can be made. We are using the PHP script from [login to view URL] and it is outdated and need some optimisation recoding and optimisation to use less resources especially to support hight traffic We would like to hire a proffesional freelancer who can deal with both Website script /database and the server config . Please do not bid unless you have the necessary skills Regards