Further Reading
Knowledge is Power. Arm Yourself.
In addition to the core content on this site, we maintain a library of quality external resources and implementation guides. If you have additional resource links to suggest, we welcome those contributions. See the contributing page for more information.
Elastic Architecture
Horizontal Scale With Open Source
Good overview from Digital Ocean on making PHP apps (like WordPress) scale horizontally using open-source tools.
Horizontal Scaling on AWS
A nice presentation from Devana Technologies with an overview of how to build WordPress for Scale on AWS.
The Pantheon Way
How Pantheon's Container-Based Elastic Hosting Scales WordPress
Page Caching
Common Pitfalls With Caching
Know the challenges and risks going into any performance optimization.
Nginx as a reverse-proxy for WordPress
Specific setup instructions for using Nginx as a reverse-proxy in front of WordPress
Varnish and WordPress
Step by step instructions to setting up Varnish in front of WordPress, from the makers of Varnish.
Object Caching
Core Caching Concepts
Zack Tollman's overview on caching concepts is a must-read for making smart decisions.
Optimizing wp_options for Speed
Excellent primer on working with wp_options, as well as transients.
WordPress Object Cache
Official documentation on the WordPress Object Cache
WordPress Redis Cache Plugin
WordPress plugin to back your WP Object Cache with Redis
Query Performance
Finding and Fixing Slow Queries
Practical advice on finding and fixing slow SQL queries in WordPress.
HyperDB and MySQL Replicas
Documentation on how to scale out read queries using MySQL replication and HyperDB
Percona's Slow Query Analyzer
Your DB can log slow queries for aggregate analysis. Find out how Percona's free tools can help you measure query performance at scale.
A Real-World Scalable Architecture
Automating WordPress Cluster Deployment
Another excellent example from Digital Ocean on how to automate clusters.
AWS CloudFormation Tutorial
Example CloudFormation template to set up a WordPress stack on Amazon
Provisioning for WordPress with Chef
Chef is one of the best systems-automation tools around. This walkthrough shows how to use it for a WordPress LAMP stack.
Scalable HA WordPress with Docker
This piece from Rancher explains how Containers, the next architectural advance beyond Virtual Machines, can be used to power large scale WordPress Implementations.
The Pantheon Way
How Pantheon's Container-Based Elastic Hosting Scales WordPress
Development and Workflow
10up Best Practices for PHP
Performant code is critical. Learn from 10up's Best Practices.
No More Cowboy Coding
A good overview of development workflows using Git by Josh Pollock at wpmudev
Trellis Ansible Playbooks
Roots has a great set of playbooks for automating development and deployment using Ansible.
Searching For Scale
Enterprise Search with Apache Solr
Learn how Apache Solr differs from MySQL and how to use it with WordPress
Example Drop-in Replacement for WP_Query
A working example of a WP_Query replacement to use an alternate search backend from Alley Interactive
Scaling Queries with ElasticSearch
Inside info from WordPress VIP on how they scale massive quantities of queries.
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