[Distance]

You have the concept of the flatfile system wrong.

This is how it works:

The shoutbox reads from the html file
When a new shout is made it is sent to the database
The database updates the html file

This way everytime someone loads up the shoutbox it only has to read a small html file (with only the latest X shouts stored) without having to bring up the whole shout table.

There would be a way but for the amount of people who would use it it isn't worth the hasstle.

Distance