10,000 Pages… What to do?

  • Hey all
    I have a unique client situation and am looking for some ideas on how to handle this. The website I am working on has been around for some time and there are more than 10,000 posts as well as 10,000+ pages. The posts are fine but the huge number of pages is causing some problems. The client is using the pages as if they were posts – just creating categorized article content with them.

    First off, is WordPress even designed to support that many pages? It is making things like using dropdowns very difficult to find the page we are looking for. We are also getting php memory errors in the admin if there is a dropdown (which seems to be a Canvas theme problem). Would a custom post type be a better option for the majority of those pages?

    How would you handle this sort of situation? I have dealt with quite a few WordPress sites but the sheer size of this one has me at a loss. I am tempted to create a custom post type and migrate all those “post” style pages to it but wanted to get a feel from others first.

    Thanks!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • The only experience I have that comes even close was when I did a wedding gown website for a reality television show that was tracking close to 150,000 products on a weekly basis. The challenges were different than what you are facing. For me it was the large amount of transients, admin-ajax.php bogging things down and the heartbeat api causing conflicts.

    Products for WooCommerce are nothing more than a custom post type so yes, custom post types can help you handle this information. Since both a post and a page are really just post types that are not custom, there really should be no difference between how WordPress handles a post, a page or even a custom post type.

    I would also imagine that, at this size, they are probably running on a dedicated hosting server. If not, you may want to look into that as an option. Is there any reason why some of this content cannot be archived?

    Good luck with your project. I apologize for the lack of information I provided.

    It sounds like you could benefit from reading up on Information Architecture planning. Because your issue is stemming from a nonexistent content model. Take the time to do that first, identify and categorize the pages on paper (or Excel or whatever) first, so you know what you’re working with. There is no doubt many of those pages and posts will end up in different categorizations.

    Depending on the content, a Custom Post Type (or a few!) sounds like it could be the solution for you. Also, figure out what belongs in the blog and create a few more categories to accommodate those pages and move them over.

    But trust me when I say the planning and organizing phase needs to happen first, it will save you a LOT of time when you decide to move these pages.

    This book by Stephanie Leary can help you understand all this. It’s small, don’t worry ??
    https://stephanieleary.com/books/content-strategy-for-wordpress/

    Thread Starter Chris

    (@lamordnt)

    Than you both for the information. I am going to check out the book for sure. I do think a custom post type is going to be the way to go and I will just have to use a plugin to migrate the pages to the new post type.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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