[Support request] Very large site navigation

[Robert]

I am moving horseadvice.com to a Wp CMS using GeneratePress. Currently it is being built at horseadvice.rnoglesby.com. The site has over 100,000 pages of which about 700 need to be a nested drop down navigation menu in the sidebars. The default Wp/GP menu options appear to load the whole menu in the html then use css styles for display. This would appear to be a huge server load when each page accessed by the users needs to download this data. I cannot find a plugin that seems to use different techniques. Currently on horseadvice.com I have a jscript on each page that makes a call to a cached js sheet so that after the first download the menu’s server load is minimal (DHTNL Menu Builder). Is there such a plug in or has anyone tried proprietary menus software based on a similar idea?

[Tom]

Hi Robert,

I’m not even sure WordPress can handle that many menu items.

If you need to list that many items in a menu, you may need to integrate a custom solution into WordPress.

I’m afraid I don’t have any experience with this kind of thing, so I can’t really even point you in the right direction.

Sorry I can’t be more helpful!

[Robert]

Thanks Tom,
It is helpful to know what might be the limits before I go down a path hard to recover from. Perhaps I should be asking a more general question. Assuming Bluehost will provide adequate storage and bandwith will Wp/Gp be able to handle peak requests of about 600 pages and 200 megabytes an hour?
Robert

[Tom]

If any theme can handle it, GP can. The theme takes up relatively nothing, so it’s more to do with your hosting.

[Author]

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