How powerful is Drupal really? [closed]

Question

I've been using Drupal for a long time, and know that it's robust and has tons of features. My question is, is it a framework that you can build REALLY big sites on? And can anyone give some examples of REALLY big sites that have been built with Drupal?

To answer my question about whether or not it's a good idea to build really big sites on Drupal, imagine having to redo facebook as a drupal site. Would it be possible (realistically)?

Answer 1

The Onion and WhiteHouse.gov are Drupal-powered, and I'd say they're fairly huge sites. The founder of the Drupal project keeps a list of some prominent Drupal-powered sites.

Answer 2

imagine having to redo facebook as a drupal site. Would it be possible (realistically)?

Yes but I wouldn't. You should probably define "Big." Do you mean big as in tons of pages or DB storage? Do you mean big as in amount of visitors? Do you mean big as in famous? Drupal is a fine CMS and if scaled properly I'm sure you can handle a large load of visitors. But the main point here is that it is a CMS (with extensibility) and not a good framework for making something completely custom. If you need something truly unique then you should use a real framework like CakePHP or CodeIgnitor, etc.