<blockquote>
  <p>As chapter numbers grow, will this be too many sections for Craft to handle?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Probably not.  I suspect as your section list grows to the multi-thousand section range (if it will ever get that large), you'll start to run into MySQL/environmental limitations rather than any Craft ones.  But if  you do run into any UI/architectural limitations, we'd love to hear about them.</p>

<p>In the upcoming Craft 2.3 release, we spent a great deal of time addressing UI scaling issues around Structured Sections and Categories when they start to approach the multi-thousand range, but we've seem installations with several hundred thousands of Channel entries/assets/users running just fine.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-11-29T01:22:09.150Z
2014-11-29T01:22:09.150Z
Brad Bell
<p>I am working on a plan for a site build that includes national content as well as many chapters' content. The latter has a number of requirements that are leading me to using separate sections including a structure for general pages and news, and events channels. </p>

<p>So looking at 3 sections per chapter and starting with around 20 chapters with more to come over time.</p>

<p>I am not worried about the manual setup of these (albeit it's not ideal); however, I am concerned about hitting limits either in the interface and/or performance of Craft that I just may not be as familiar with.</p>

<p>As chapter numbers grow, will this be too many sections for Craft to handle?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-11-28T20:56:00.590Z
If the 3 sections per chapter are all basically the same 3 identical section, why not just have 3 sections **period**? Then you could use something like Categories to identify which entries belong to which chapter.
Lindsey D
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-11-29T21:33:27.340Z
@LindseyD I am exploring that as well; however, there are permission issues at play here, too. Would make a lengthy post to share all the details.
SethG
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-01T05:35:12.740Z
Interesting, factoring in permissions would certainly complicate things. You may be able to separate based on user groups (instead of categories), but that probably brings its own set of complications.
Lindsey D
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-16T18:12:23.303Z
This doesn't directly address the limits, but the manual setup. [The Architect plugin](https://github.com/Pennebaker/craftcms-thearchitect) can help with the manual setup. As long as the models are the same for each chapter, you can export the structures and entryTypes to a .json doc, and then store them in one of the plugin's folders. Every time you need to make a chapter, copy the .json model, update it to configure chapter info, and reimport it. Should cut down on time.
Ian DeRanieri
<sections><contentmodel>
Architecting a Solution with many Sites within a Site (Chapters) - How many sections can Craft Handle?
# Architecting a Solution with many Sites within a Site (Chapters) - How many sections can Craft Handle?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-11-28)

I am working on a plan for a site build that includes national content as well as many chapters' content. The latter has a number of requirements that are leading me to using separate sections including a structure for general pages and news, and events channels.

So looking at 3 sections per chapter and starting with around 20 chapters with more to come over time.

I am not worried about the manual setup of these (albeit it's not ideal); however, I am concerned about hitting limits either in the interface and/or performance of Craft that I just may not be as familiar with.

As chapter numbers grow, will this be too many sections for Craft to handle?

**Tags:** sections, contentmodel

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: If the 3 sections per chapter are all basically the same 3 identical section, why not just have 3 sections **period**? Then you could use something like Categories to identify which entries belong to which chapter.  
> **username_0**: @LindseyD I am exploring that as well; however, there are permission issues at play here, too. Would make a lengthy post to share all the details.  
> **username_1**: Interesting, factoring in permissions would certainly complicate things. You may be able to separate based on user groups (instead of categories), but that probably brings its own set of complications.  
> **username_2**: This doesn't directly address the limits, but the manual setup. [The Architect plugin](https://github.com/Pennebaker/craftcms-thearchitect) can help with the manual setup. As long as the models are the same for each chapter, you can export the structures and entryTypes to a .json doc, and then store them in one of the plugin's folders. Every time you need to make a chapter, copy the .json model, update it to configure chapter info, and reimport it. Should cut down on time.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2014-11-29. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

> As chapter numbers grow, will this be too many sections for Craft to handle?

Probably not. I suspect as your section list grows to the multi-thousand section range (if it will ever get that large), you'll start to run into MySQL/environmental limitations rather than any Craft ones. But if you do run into any UI/architectural limitations, we'd love to hear about them.

In the upcoming Craft 2.3 release, we spent a great deal of time addressing UI scaling issues around Structured Sections and Categories when they start to approach the multi-thousand range, but we've seem installations with several hundred thousands of Channel entries/assets/users running just fine.


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