Wordpress limits - system design consideration

Question

I am designing a system for a customer. We are thinking about using Wordpress as a main platform (instead of writing our custom software), and customize it using addons or hiring developers to write some custom modules. We need to have an ability to have some static pages, few php pages, and lot of user generated content.

What limits do Wordpress have? I have searched website, but did not found any info about for example max number of users. I am interested in experience-based opinions.

So, how Wordpress performs on multi-user websites? Or - do you think it is better to leave Wordpress, and swithch to some other open-source CMS?

Edit

The core functionality about the system will be to allow user to put text content and photos on categorized pages. Some users need an ability to have classic blog on the site, while others will only occasionally publish some content. Some data will be polled by RSS from users’ blogs on the other platform (with a respect to copyrights and legal stuff).

So as far as now I have identified a lot of blog-like functionality.

Answer 1

I have had some pretty good success using Drupal. If you aren't trying to build a blog there are much better things out there for dynamic CMS. Wordpress is a great piece of blogging software. Try to make it do something else? It becomes a big pain to do. Having developed "applications" in both. If a blog is not the primary component (which a news site would also follow suit) then use a true CMS and not a blogging platform.

Answer 2

WordPress places no maximum on users, posts, etc. beyond that of the underlying technologies (your database, mainly). WordPress.com runs on the WordPress MultiUser platform and it has six million blogs, a billion monthly pageviews, and 200k new posts a day.

Your limitations will be more structural - WordPress is designed first and foremost as a blogging platform. If its interface and methodology fit your project well, go for it, but if you're going to be hacking the shit out of it, a more generalist system like Drupal may suit you better.