One of our readers asked us a great question on Twitter, “could they host their site on a CDN (Content Delivery Network)?” Our answer: yes and no, a CDN’s main purpose is deliver static content (images, CSS, Javascript, and ZIP files) from the closest geographically based server to a particular user on your website. A traditional WordPress by definition is going to be non-static (unless you’re using WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache).
If you really want the fastest WordPress site out there, putting your WordPress site on Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud platform would probably be the way to go. Now you ask, how do you do that?
We found some good answers (and questions) on this particular WordPress Answers thread from Stack Exchange. Read more…
Our friend at Freelance CTO, John Shiple sent us three other sets of guides:
- Setup AWS connected to a RDS database
- Tips for deploying a LAMP stack on Amazon EC2
- Running MySQL on Amazon EC2 with EBS
Before you run out and do this, we think setting up your WordPress site on Amazon Web Services is overkill for 98% of the WordPress users out there. We recommend starting with a fast web host with a toll-free support number, activate the WP Super Cache and Autoptimize plugins, and sign up for WP CDN. We’d be willing to bet good money that’s going to work be plenty fast enough for most WordPress sites.