Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

WordPress

Posted by Kei Emb
Kei Emb
3,929 Points

How scalable is wordpress?

Hello Team Treehouse comrades!

I am currently building a website using wordpress, buddypress and a premium template. The type of content the site will host are recipes, photos, profiles, blogs and potentially videos.

Overall, I plan to implement other features on the site in the future. At the moment I am utilizing wordpress, but I plan to build a web app using ruby on rails while growing the wordpress site.

My goal here is to test the site and its features, make tweaks then launch the site on wordpress. Then, while growing a user base and content, build a ruby on rails app and move the content and user base to the new web app and work from there.

So, while building the site now, is it worthwhile building and growing the wordpress site? Is it scalable? As well, does my plan make sense or should I consider other routes?

Thanks for the help!

KeiEmb

Zac Gordon Jason Seifer Nick Pettit

1 Answer

Ben Myhre
Ben Myhre
28,726 Points
Ben Myhre
Ben Myhre
28,726 Points

This is an interesting questions, as that one of the bigger supposed disadvantages of RoR is that it is not scalable.

So, you are asking if Wordpress is scalable enough for a site while you are building something that arguably is not scalable. I know there are legit opinions on scalability of either, but I also call a bit of bs. The New Yorker and Wired are built with Wordpress. Air BnB and Hulu are RoR I believe.

I would more be interested in what you mean by the features of the site? Are you going to have to build PHP plugins and whatnot to make it do what you want or are you starting off with basic WP functionality with some existing plugins?

Without understanding exactly what you are trying to implement, my initial reaction would be to skip WP altogether (except maybe as a blogging platform) and dig straight into rails, yo! I mean, one of the huge benefits of RoR is that it allows you to rapidly build stuff!

Good luck!!

Kei Emb
Kei Emb
3,929 Points

Thanks Benjamin for replying!

As far as the WP site I've considered creating a few plug ins and widgets such as a navigation and chat box, but other than that, the future features would be thought of as time and user feedback progressed.

I'd rather build the site using RoR but Im not 100% sure about how heavy I could build upon it. The aim for the site would have over 150,000 members and over 100,000 recipes, photos and eventually videos.

Pretty curious to see the best approach to build this.

Thanks for the luck!