WordPress MU

Hello,

I'm in the process of creating a community site that will be using WPMU (among other things)... if all goes as plan, the site will grow very large.

After reading some treads on this forum, I am starting to think that WPMU cannot handle a large number of users without extensive modifications i.e. server upgrades, mult databases, etc.

If you plan to have a community site that with 50,000 would WPMU be an appropriate application?

What about if you have 1 or 2 million users... would WPMU be appropriate?

I guess my question is what are the limitations of this application, and how hard is it to overcome these problems?

Thanks in advance for any advice/suggestions.

Mark W. Olsen

Well, wordpress.com has about 1million users and such, and it's humming along nicely.

You'll need good hardware, and people that know what they are doing.

Yes, MU can scale. But you aren't going to be running much off of shared hosting, that's for sure. So yeah, it will need the appropriate equipment to handle the equivalent load. If it has that, then it's fine.

There are certain limitations out of the box, but that isn't because of MU. It isn't a walk in the park, but it isn't something that someone with reasonable experience and proficiency can't manage.

Although, as I'm sure you're aware, the odds of gaining that many users are well stacked against you. But that's the business side of it.

Mark, you're not from Maine, are you? I knew a Mark Olsen way back when....

You may want to take a look at this program for a service that allows you to expand wpmu into large volume setups, especially with the multiple databases:

http://premium.wpmudev.org/

I agree with luna. WPMu is a start but if you're talking about very large scale installations, you need to know what you're doing and be willing to put the time and money into the site. You're not going to be able to do 50k blogs in a shared hosting account, nor I doubt on a single box. For reference, last time I knew a number, wp.com was on a total of something like 193 "CPUs" as they put it.

I have a 15k+ blog install with one of my clients and we're in the process of moving them into a second box currently.

I seriously doubt any software supporting a large number of clients is going to work on a single box. They may tell you that it will but I doubt it in the long run.

You may want to consider contacting a consultant for more assistance:

http://incsub.com/ (They're wpmu specific)

or

http://automattic.com/services/wordpress-consultants/ (WP in general)

edit: Don't let us scare you off. It's doable as wp.com and edublogs and harvard.edu will show you. You just have to work at it.

Thank you both for taking the time to give thorough answers to my questions.

Currently, I have a dedicated server through godaddy.com (dual 2.13 CPUs, 2GB of ram).... hopefully this can get me by for some time?

I understand the significance of having a community with 100,000 + members... *Just so ya know that I'm not just some hopeful newbie pulling an unrealistic number out of my butt... we have a good niche, the right backing, and good marketing ;)

The application I am developing (http://69.61.15.150/~true2our/) is taking much longer to develop than anticipated. It's using several different modules and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything is going to work together is perfect harmony.

When members join the community, there is a lot of simultaneous registration going on:

1. Whatever platform my developers are using for the 'my page' and basic community functions
2. Vbulletin forum
3. Wordpress MU
4. Video technology that allows members all the same functions as youtube (not yet active).

Wordpress MU is obviously handling the blog aspect of our community... I am the one that introduced WPMU to my developers, and they've already done some strange things with the application that are giving me knots in my stomach.

I originally decided to use WPMU for our application because I thought it would help our community site 'stand out' from others... I do not, however, want to end up with something that drains so much resources that it's unrealistic for a very high member site.

*I apologize for continuing to go on... I've been tackling this project single handily for over a year now and it's starting to take it's tole on me... I just want to finally get this project done right - or at least right enough where I can improve it after we reach 10,000 members, for example.

I appreciate all the insights and advice... it's very helpful!

*** oh ya, I'm not the Mark Olsen from Maine... I'm from Tampa Florida!

Speaking of MU alone, that single box could get you in the 10k neighborhood, give or take.

Lots of variables go into that, like load and such, but that's the case with any app.