Today, Chris Lauzon (@squireX2) and I presented a talk at WordCamp Phoenix entitled How to Scale WordPress. Here’s how we described our talk:
Developing and managing an optimized WordPress site can be challenging for anyone not familiar with how to scale a site. This presentation will cover some of the basics of putting together a WordPress site designed for excellent performance and scalability, followed by discussion about more advanced infrastructure topics.
Running a high-scale WordPress site starts with code optimization, including effective use of WordPress’ APIs. We’ll discuss WP_Query and the advantages of using it instead of direct database queries. We’ll also delve into the appropriate and effective use of WordPress’ two native caching APIs, which will lead into the infrastructure portion of our talk.
There are a million options when it comes to hosting your WordPress site, such as shared hosting, managed hosting, VPS, etc. Each has its advantages, which we’ll explore while discussing when stepping up to the next level becomes appropriate. We will also cover different methods of caching, including using database optimization methods, and implementing a content delivery network (CDN).
Our slides are available at http://goo.gl/p92Ja. The video is available at http://wordpress.tv/2012/03/04/erick-hitter-chris-lauzon-how-to-scale-wordpress/.