tldr; 'Scaling' WordPress is simple. Install a caching plugin like WP Super Cache.
WP gets a bad rap because it seems to spit out the oh so unattractive "Error Connecting to Database" message under the slightest load. Perhaps it's inefficient, i'm not sure why it seems to die so easily.
But... good news is, there is a simple solution. WP renders everything dynamically on every request. It fetches the post from the DB each time you load the page. But, more often than not, the content is only going to change when 1) you write a new post, or 2) a comment is made to a post.
A simple caching plugin solves this. It will render the page with a specific timeout (3600 seconds is default I think?, 1 hr) and then just serve up that HTML rather than hitting the DB. This will solve 99% of your problems. I've never really seen a WP site die when used with something like this. Duh, because it's just static HTML at that point haha.
Combine this with a PHP cache like APC (my personal favorite opcode cache of the moment) and a fast webserver like nginx, and you're gonna pretty much survive anything.
WP gets a bad rap because it seems to spit out the oh so unattractive "Error Connecting to Database" message under the slightest load. Perhaps it's inefficient, i'm not sure why it seems to die so easily.
But... good news is, there is a simple solution. WP renders everything dynamically on every request. It fetches the post from the DB each time you load the page. But, more often than not, the content is only going to change when 1) you write a new post, or 2) a comment is made to a post.
A simple caching plugin solves this. It will render the page with a specific timeout (3600 seconds is default I think?, 1 hr) and then just serve up that HTML rather than hitting the DB. This will solve 99% of your problems. I've never really seen a WP site die when used with something like this. Duh, because it's just static HTML at that point haha.
Combine this with a PHP cache like APC (my personal favorite opcode cache of the moment) and a fast webserver like nginx, and you're gonna pretty much survive anything.