Can a social networking site using wordpress CMS handle millions of users?

It'll require care and some good developers (as any large scale website does), but it's certainly possible. WordPress. Com is by far the largest WordPress installation out there, and it is quite stable and responsive.

They've built a lot of social network features into it (there's also BuddyPress if you're looking for a more specifically tailored social media installation of WP).

Thanks! I do plan on hiring developers to re-write the code at some point (in order to scale) so my biggest concerns right now are performance (in case it picks up fast during the time to re-develop) and the difficulty of migratng the data. – edwli May 22 at 19:59.

Anything of a such a big scale should be properly designed to required specifications and developed. CMSs and Wordpress just won't do. You will run into many roadblocks with implementation itself, not just scaling.

Well, scalability depends on additional factors and not just on using a particular framework. I have seen a number of websites built on top of wordpress which are handling millions of users. One such example is tribune.com.pk/ Of course, you always have room to tweak the original wordpress installation and fit it within your own constraints by removing the parts you don't need from wordpress.

Could you define what you are looking for when you say "social networking site". It is a very diverse term. Like ceejayoz said wordpress.Com is a heavy used website that can handle millions of visitors.

There are many examples of wordpress sites with a heavy user base. Yet it all depends on hardware, software usage and what types of plugins you are using. Nginx can make a huge difference with Wordpress.

Yes. Wordpress can handle millions of users. Two key factors on which the performance of site depends upon are: Development - Good session management to increase performance.

Application Framework - A application framework which can support millions of users. Hardware - Best hardware. Remember , facebook added 30 million dollars of hardware to its cluster of facebook servers when it introduced chat.

Hosting - Cloud hosting or web farms.

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