Enterprise-Class WordPress

I’d been thinking that WordPress might be tricky to scale, but between WP-Cache and the newly announced HyperDB, I think WP might well have some legs in it.

WP-Cache stores pages as static files, and dramatically reduces the load on the database. This makes sites more responsive, and at least theoretically able to survive a Slashdotting or Digging.

Matt just announced the other side of the equation. Enterprise-level database connectivity. They’re releasing the (previously custom) database class that was developed for WordPress.com. It obviously works, as WordPress.com has something like 47 quajillion blogs hosted, with pretty decent performance.

Matt’s notes on the HyperDB release describe features including:

  • Replication
  • Failover
  • Redundant (public/private) networks
  • Local and remote datacenters
  • Partitioning
  • Different tables on different DBs
  • Advanced stats for profiling
  • More…?

So, it supports spreading databases across a bunch of servers, making it easier to set up server clusters to scale WordPress (and WPMU) up to any level you want. Might be handy for, oh, I don’t know… an institutional blogging platform?

WordPress just got a bunch more interesting, from a CMS perspective…

7 thoughts on “Enterprise-Class WordPress”

  1. You know, I’m not sure I tell you often enough how fascinating and wonderful I find this blog. And ever since the recent switch, “WordPress darcynorman.net just got a bunch more interesting”

  2. Come on Mr Norman, how do you think Edublogs has been scaling 😉

    In fact we’ve been putting together ‘institutional blogging platforms’ on what’s basically the same as hyperdb code for sometime now…. just that we had to make it ourselves!

  3. @Jim: Dude, I could write a post that just said “wordpress wordpress blah blah wordpress” and you’d be happy 🙂

    @James: I knew it _could_ scale, just that I thought it was a little funky having a trillion tables in a single database (out of the box config, anyway). The HyperDB stuff makes large scale database management much more manageable.

  4. Ever heard of KWEE — enterprise level WP mutant — by a company called KnowNow. We came close to hiring them to support blogs at Baruch College — LDAP integration was a big selling point — but we were not ready and they had never worked with a school before and had no clue as how to price stuff. We’re moving towards WPMU now.

  5. Wow D’Arcy,

    That was the best reply to a comment I ever got! Three, count ’em three, “wordpress”es in there!

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