Can Backdrop Handle Large Websites?

Hey, @torycw - glad to see that you found and appreciate Backdrop CMS. Backdrop CMS is fundamentally an advanced version of Drupal 7 and there is no reason that Backdrop can't handle anything that Drupal 7 can if the modules you need are available or you are able to port them (over 400 modules have been ported already). 

The emphasis on "small to medium size businesses and non-profits" is who we are thinking about in the development process and when prioritizing new features. It really should not reflect on the technical capability of Backdrop CMS. 

Part of the reason for the fork of Backdrop CMS was the perceived focus on features and work flows for enterprise sites in Drupal 8. The Backdrop CMS community is focused on meeting the needs of "small to medium size businesses and non-profits," but there is no inherent reason that it can't be used for larger projects. Just don't expect us to be investing in core features that primarily address the concerns of large sites - there is space for these features in Backdrop CMS contrib. 

That's my answer to your question, I look forward to hearing what others have to say.

@torycw, it isn't that Backdrop was marketed towards small to medium websites - it's much more that Backdrop is marketed towards the needs of small to medium sized agencies.  We are the group that Drupal 8 left in the dust. Drupal 8 is geared towards larger agencies with with large development staffs. By extension, most of their clients are large-scale enterprises.  I evaluated Drupal 8 several times and each time, I concluded that the development cost was at least 15 - 25 K  for a site done in Drupal 8 (There was no dispute from anyone on that - feel free to look at the threads on Drupal.org if you want.).  For the 1 - 5% of my more than 100 clients that could afford that budget,  it was a complete waste because that 15-25K was a bare minimum.  The site they wanted could be done in Wordpress or Backdrop for a tenth of what it would cost in Drupal 8.

We've been in business over 20 years and have a lot of clients on Drupal 7 (and some still on 6 ARGGH) and there has never been a single instance of performance problems or scalability with Drupal 7 (or 6 for that matter).  Some of those clients are large national clients as well.  They aren't the size of the US government or a big ten Ivy League university, but we've got some pretty decent sized clients.  Our issues in scale have a lot more to do with staffing, since we're a small firm.

I have 4 projects in development with Backdrop (2 are large clients with big sites) and so far, it's had all the benefits of Drupal 7 along with some huge improvements in things like updates and flexible/custom layouts.  

So far, I've been able to do everything I need to with minimal coding and I've been really surprised and pleased at how easy everything has been.

The support is also fantastic (a big improvement over Drupal in the last 3 years) and the CMS improves with each update.

I really don't think you have to be concerned about scale.

Elisabeth Garbeil, Brainwrap LLC

Hey @torycw,

I fully agree with the previous comments here. There is no "marketing" intention in the phrase "Backdrop is for small to medium size businesses and non-profits"; it's just to denote that Backdrop is a place people can call "home" if the whole D8/9 move to enterprise (or "ambitious") has left them in a situation where they need to invest time/money/energy they cannot afford. These people may either be small/medium digital agencies, solo freelancer developers and site builders, or site owners.

Having said the above, the phrase is by no means meant to be indicating any lack in technical capability to scale. As others mentioned, anything you could do with D7, you can do with Backdrop ...only faster/better :)

I've tried Drupal 8 a bunch of times over the years ...it just doesn't work with what MY site does AND my programmer skills level.

Welcome to the club then! 😄 ...take it from the person in the Project Management Committee that is the constituent for non-coder site builders, that Backdrop is being developed with love, with people like you in mind. You should not need to be a "senior" developer, master of all things (composer/symfony/twig) in order to work with Backdrop. Just bring along any basic HTML/CSS/PHP skills you may have, and you should be able to "tinker" away! ...just like the D7 "good old days" 😊

As for your question re porting D7 modules to Backdrop, most of the times (for simple modules), all you'd need to do is change a single line of code in the .info file, and chances are that it would work as is. More complex modules do require a bit of extra work, but it should be fairly straight forward; and if you get stuck, either post a question here, or join us on our chat.

Yes, Backdrop can for sure handle large (and complex) sites. While I've mainly built smaller sites with Backdrop so far, I've also built a quite complex one with changing needs and many new features over the last two years, and it went really well.

That said, I'd look for potential blockers, e.g. if you absolutely need a module like Organic Groups which hasn't been ported to Backdrop as far as I know, and may be difficult to port in your time frame.

Apart of that, I see no restrictions when you're able to port smaller modules. Sometimes, there are also better alternative modules for Backdrop. Finally, in a few situations I've also used workarounds, and some of them were after all a better fit than the original approach.