Can WP handle REAL volume/traffic?

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If configured properly, on the right hardware, optimized like crazy, can Wordpress *scream* with 100K+ hits daily? With Buddypress? We're building a platform where we're confident we can get the traffic but want to make the right choices. Wordpress seems to be ideal with the vast number of freelancers familiar with it (not to mention our developers), open source, excellent plugins, etc. but if the Wordpress / Buddypress route isn't ideal and we should be looking at Drupal, Joomla, etc. please let me know though Wordpress is ideal. I think we can work with minimal amount of plugins and create a theme on our own that is optimized for speed. Any insight you could provide would be helpful. Thanks!
#programming #handle #real #volume or traffic
  • Yes, if WordPress and the server are configured for speed. Two big things you can do:

    1. Enable some form of caching on the WP side
    2. Enable some form of PHP bytecode caching (APC works pretty nicely)

    If it's configured correctly and the server is tweaked to handle the load it will run pretty fast.
  • Yep, most major news sites are using word press these days, places like CNN and Fox News are doing that.

    There's a bunch of caching plugins that will work that are free, just put Cache or Caching into the plugin search on wordpress.org and you'll get plenty of hits for things. Wordpress isn't an intense program, you will have much more trouble getting 100,000 page views per day than making wordpress handle it.
  • With the right server setup and using Nginx/Varnish and other services we can configure a blog on a server to take over 100k hits an hour. So yes, it is possible.
  • Wordpress is meant to handle a lot of traffic but i've heard that this is a real issue.

    Wordpress' own tips on handling traffic:
    High Traffic Tips For WordPress « WordPress Codex
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  • There are a few good caching plugins for Wordpress that will help you handle a lot of traffic with very little CPU and database load (off the top of my head, WP SuperCache and W3 Total Cache are both pretty good.. use one or the other).

    If you can (on many shared hosts, you can't), putting everything behind a Varnish cache will also increase the amount of traffic you can handle.

    Serving assets (javascripts, CSS, graphics) from a CDN like Cloudfront can also make a difference.
  • We have a few sites that get hundreds of unique visitors everyday. Wordpress can handle far more traffic than that. What you should be concerned about is your hosting company and bandwidth throttling. Make sure that your hosting plan has the package big enough for the sort of traffic you're expecting.
  • As the wordpress is designed it gets quality supports to handle a number of visitors.
    But to have proper performance you also need to have a server provider that will give you much more option to handle visitors.
  • You should use dedicated servers and use wp super cache plugin.
    I have a site in wordpress that have 30,000 visits per day. my site is thetop100songs.com
    • [1] reply
    • So in addition to having a fat server and turning on cacheing, you need to look at optimizing stuff like number of javascript/css files you are loading, if you have lots of modules and plugins, each loading their own css and js, this can become a performance issue with a lot of traffic.
      You can minimize css and javascript files, and combine them into fewer files to reduce http request overhead, also stuff like using css sprites can help.
      With high volume sites, every couple of kb and http requests you can shave off can have significant impact on performance.

      Also, look at stuff like gzip, where the server compresses the files for faster download.
  • WordPress itself use WP as back-end and they normally got thousands hits everyday. So you do not need to be concern about WordPress. If your site is hosted for on a shared hosting you can think about that. Sometime getting 100 visitor on a shared hosting can make your site down!!
  • I'm absolutely positive Wordpress can handle even more than 100k hits daily. You just need a proper server like a VPS or dedicated, i don't think a Shared hosting would help you.
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    • The more traffic the more database calls and the slower the site will or could get. This is especially so on shared hosting. Wordpress makes a lot of demands on a server and more so where the website creator is obsessed with plugins. More plugins more database calls and demands. This can cripple a site. If you are going to run a large wordpress site then consider only using plugins that you really need and no other. I think you will find that database demands are much more important than anything else.
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    Can WP handle REAL volume/traffic?

    If configured properly, on the right hardware, optimized like crazy, can Wordpress *scream* with 100K+ hits daily? With Buddypress? We're building a platform where we're confident we can get the traffic but want to make the right choices. Wordpress seems to be ideal with the vast number of freelancers familiar with it (not to mention our developers), open source, excellent plugins, etc. but if the Wordpress / Buddypress route isn't ideal and we should be looking at Drupal, Joomla, etc. please let me know though Wordpress is ideal. I think we can work with minimal amount of plugins and create a theme on our own that is optimized for speed. Any insight you could provide would be helpful. Thanks!