[wp-hackers] State of WP

[Kevin McCann]

Hi,

First, I apologize if this is not the right place to post this. Despite 
being new to WP I decided to join the hackers list because I thought it 
might best tell me what the state of WP is today. Indeed, I have seen 
some interesting discussions, including the current one regarding tables 
and query inefficiencies. I'd like to further get a sense of where WP is 
as far as matters of efficiency and maturity go.

I need to either choose an open source blogging package, or start one 
from scratch, that will support  at least 100,000 sites, have a 
multi-site approach with one user base, have a flexible permissions 
system, be able to perform and scale. There are other requirements, some 
very specific, and I'm trying to figure out whether WP is something that 
can be built upon, or if it would be easier to just start something from 
the ground up. Here are some questions:

- what are the most serious problems or limitations of WP today?
- approximately how many people are involved in WP development?
- is the project moving along smoothly? (is there consensus on what 
needs to be done)?
- if I was to take an open source blogging software package and tweak it 
for my own needs (hopefully with modules rather than hacks), are there 
packages that are more suitable than WP, or is it pretty much the best 
choice to start with?

Also, for the WPMU side of things:

- each site would have its 8 uniquely-prefixed tables. Times that by 
100,000 or possibly much more... anyone know if this'll be a problem for 
MySQL?
- am I wrong in having the impression that many plug-ins don't work with 
WPMU? I tried Role Manager (I need to create new roles) but it doesn't 
work. The plug-in creator wrote on his website that "Role Manager wasn't 
designed for WPMU..." and didn't say much more than that. So, is the 
common feeling that WP is the focus and that WPMU is this other minor 
thing on the side? ie will many/most plug-ins simply not work with WPMU 
because there is little reason for plu-in developers to worry about that?

Thanks in advance for any feedback. Feel free to send private replies to 
kmccann AT cruciverb.com if that would be more appropriate.

- Kevin