We’ve been using WordPress.com to host our site. This is a cost effect solution, particularly with the cheaper subscription levels, but we decided that we really needed to drink our own kool-aid and migrate to our own public cloud.
This even resulted in a saving for us as we have a Microsoft Partner account which has monthly Azure credits.
Finally since we are now running our own WordPress site there are no functionality restrictions as is the case with the WordPress.com sites.
With Azure there are a few different ways to deploy WordPress:
Deploy WordPress using a VM in IaaS. This could be done using either one or several Windows or Linux VM. Using this model you need to think about whether you want to scale up or out and design this capability. You’re also running a full blown operating system so you are paying to run this as well as having to maintain it yourself.
Next you could deploy everything into a container This would result in both the database and the web site running inside a container. This will have the smallest footprint but scaling the solution will be a little harder as the database is contained inside the docker container as well.
You could also use the PaaS Web App service to run WordPress. This again can be either a Windows or Linux web service. In this case you will also need to deploy a database service which does allow for the web service to be scaled out if required.
Finally you can also use containers but with an external database. This will use a docker image for the web service which connects to a dedicated database service. This solution actually runs on the Linux PaaS Web App so the difference between the two is how you stand up your solution. Is it pulled in from a docker image repository or do you push the web code using git into the web service?
In the end we decided on a WordPress docker image connecting to a Azure Database for mySQL server. This allowed for a shockingly quick deployment while still allowing some flexibility and the ability to expand.
In the next article we’ll go through the process of how we set up this site.