[openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website] Extend `contributing.md` with a bird's eye view of server and services (Issue #4275)

[Tobias]

### Problem

It would be great to have a section in [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) that gives a bird's eye view about servers and services of the OSM website.

This came up for me recently when…
- we talked about if there is a staging system to test out https://github.com/osmfoundation/ewg_bidding/pull/8
- I commented on https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/3831#issuecomment-1748010807 and was wondering if there is a queuing system

I am sure is information on this elsewhere, but I suggest to collect and link it as a section "Overview of deployment, server and services" at the end of [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

If we collect some links and info in comments here, I can create a draft for this section.

A few questions I think this section could answer:
- What is the production server architecture of the website (# of application server, deployment process)
- Is there a queuing system / which and some relevant specs
- Is there a system in place to use [Action Cable](https://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_cable_overview.html)? AFAIK we don't but could we?
- Relevant notes on the database server
- Relevant notes on the staging / testing server
- AFAIK there is not dev > staging > production deployment but the staging instances are used as needed, right?

---

Site note: I first thought this would be something to put into an `ARCHITECTURE.md` https://matklad.github.io/2021/02/06/ARCHITECTURE.md.html which became a kind of standard for some projects. However, it looks like this doc would be more a of a code architecture overview which we IMO do not need due to rails standards. This issue is more about the system architecture and related processes.

### Description

_No response_

### Screenshots

_No response_

-- 
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/4275
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.

Message ID: <openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/4275 at github.com>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/rails-dev/attachments/20231004/84ab8dbb/attachment.htm>