Question

Most efficient setup for Wordpress

Posted on June 7, 2017
Ubuntu 16.04 Control Panels
Asked by Tanner Chung

I’m trying to build an efficient setup right off the bat and migrate a lot of client sites over to DO. Does anyone have a good idea of how to set up a sustainable efficient ecosystem of droplets for multiple WordPress sites where the files are on one server, database on another, etc. for “medium” sized site load? I’m assuming if I want to use a control panel and other apps I should probably use a different server for them as well right?

I know as an open ended question it could go infinitely more efficient but let’s say 1-5 sites is one droplet with everything on that server, what about 10-20 sites with ~2000 pageviews/month?

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Flamber Hansen • June 8, 2017

Accepted Answer

@tannerchung Just starting a new thread, because it was getting very narrow.

Yes, that’s a good, sustainable solution to use Block Storage - and if you follow the question thread you’ve linked to (which I also answered) - then you can always move to other solutions in the future, if that would ever be needed. Just remember that Block Storage isn’t available in every data center yet, so when you choose data center for your droplet, it has to be FRA1, NYC1, SFO2 or SGP1.

To start with, create a single $5 droplet.
After it’s created, you can resize to $10 or $20, but without resizing the storage, so you can downscale again.
Do not expect to be able to run WordPress on $5 - it needs minimum $10 (if you run everything on a single droplet) - and the more plugins, themes and/or multiple sites, the more expensive you need to go.
Do not use Apache - just run with Nginx, it’s faster and instead of two services, there would only be one.
When you feel you’re ready for more servers, just setup a new droplet, dump the entire database and copy it over to the new droplet (and setup logins/security), and then you just change your WordPress configuration wp-config.php to use the database on the new droplet. And finally you remove and uninstall the database from the original droplet.
When you need more space for media/files, then you would setup Block Storage by following the question you’ve already linked to. Just a note, I created that guide for a single WordPress site, so it need to be changed a bit to accommodate multiple sites.
And from there, you can expand by adding load balancer, cache, or other server types.

You can get pretty far by following this tutorial (it’s for a single server setup): https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-wordpress-with-lemp-on-ubuntu-16-04

Flamber Hansen • June 8, 2017

@tannerchung

Sorry, forgot about the .htaccess and CloudFlare.

I’ve only seen a couple of plugins, which requires .htaccess (or manual changes to configuration). Most of the plugins lists the exact configuration changes needed for Nginx in the documentation or on their website. If not, just tell me which plugins you’re having problems with.

CloudFlare can never fully replace Nginx cache or Varnish, since they do something you control and can make very specific to your needs. But if you just use simple full page cache, then CloudFlare is probably a good choice. But then again, CloudFlare offers a lot more than just cache, so it’s a very simple, easy way to add some security, cache and CDN offloading to your site.

salmansaleem920 • March 14, 2019

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