Questions from a newcomer

[waak]

Hi everyone, this is William.

First, I just want to say I'm very impressed with ProcessWire simple way of coding php, especially because I'm a designer and html/css coder with *very* basic php skills.

I have one question though: how does ProcessWire handle large sites/web apps/social features etc. considering everything is stored as pages?

For example, a site with a potential of millions of pages, images, users and user generated content, tags, etc.?! How does it handle all that?

Happy holidays everyone!

[netcarver]

Hello waak, 

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the holiday greetings. Do you seriously have a site of that scale? If so, how many views per minute does it need to serve and is it mainly of static pages?

In the meantime, there are links on google to answers to similar questions to yours. You may find what you need in those replies.

[Joss]

We are going to HAVE to put something about pages on the front of the site at this rate

A page is only a data container - so it can be used as a complex thing with loads of fields contributing contents, or it can be used as just a single line of data for something like a drop down or a row in a table. it had to be called something and Page was it. But it is not like saving thousands of dreamweaver pages.

As for scalability - well, by the time you get to millions of pages and millions of requests, really, you are probably going to be more concerned about the size of your server farm than anything else!

[pwired]

Howdie Newbie - glad you could make it to here. Time has come

to sell all your other webgenerators. From now one PW's Engine

is going to turbo drive all your webwheels.

[Peter Knight]

A page is only a data container - so it can be used as a complex thing with loads of fields contributing contents, or it can be used as just a single line of data for something like a drop down or a row in a table. it had to be called something and Page was it. But it is not like saving thousands of dreamweaver pages.

Well explained.

It's really important when you're learning a new system to be completely comfortable with the terminology. If the words used to describe something doesn't gel with you, then you're not going to absorb the concept.

Reminds me many years ago of trying to learn expression engine when everything in the tutorial book (and Expression Engine) was called a blog. I didn't get it (at the time) until EE 2 came out and their internal terminology changed.

So these days, to counter getting hung up on a keyword or label which I find confusing, I will treat a word as an anagram instead.

IE Instead of thinking "its a page", imagine it's a P.A.G.E and make up your own meaning for this such as

Part of Anything Going to be Edited

Pod for All your Generated Entries

Place Already Great for Expansion

I'm sure there's better possibilities but it may help. Or it may make things worse :-/