Agreed. I self-hosted a wordpress blog for a video-game fan site. I had a server status page that was a normal wordpress page that imported a file from the filesystem to embed in the middle (reported status of the game servers).
During some large events, I was seeing 5-7 page views per second and Wordpress did just fine (I think I had 120k page views in 24 hours). But I made sure to test as much of my site as possible to make sure it performed well. Using various page analyzers to make sure the proper headers were returned so objects were cached on the client. Tuning wordpress to cache pages properly. Turning on PHP APC (opcode cache). Running various stress tests on the site (apache benchmark and loadimpact).
I'd say the page analysis tools and extended apache-benchmark runs really helped me tune my OS and services properly so I could handle a huge load.
During some large events, I was seeing 5-7 page views per second and Wordpress did just fine (I think I had 120k page views in 24 hours). But I made sure to test as much of my site as possible to make sure it performed well. Using various page analyzers to make sure the proper headers were returned so objects were cached on the client. Tuning wordpress to cache pages properly. Turning on PHP APC (opcode cache). Running various stress tests on the site (apache benchmark and loadimpact).
I'd say the page analysis tools and extended apache-benchmark runs really helped me tune my OS and services properly so I could handle a huge load.