What is a good approach for a scalable website/ web application? What backend, cms or approach in general would you go for?

Question

I'm wondering how to start a bigger project. The Website is Community based. So it should implement all the typical functionality. Also, later on, it should be possible to easily write an app for it and eventually integrate a shop. What backend framework or cms would you use and how would you start such a project?

Answer 1

First you have to decide what you want to do.
Then check what other people did. Do you agree with them or do you want to change it?
As for Backend you wrote CMS so it's gonna be PHP with MySQL (?). Otherwise you can have Node.js or Ruby on Rails.