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A look at serverless WordPress

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2 Hi! 2 I’m Carl Alexander @twigpress carlalexander.ca

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“Servers. Can’t live with them. Can’t live without them.” - WordPress developer (when a server blows up)

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Server management

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Still responsible

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WordPress hosting

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Still need to over provision

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Serverless addresses these problems

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1 What Is Serverless?

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“Are there really no servers with serverless!?” - Literally everyone I mention serverless to

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Marketing term

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Functions as a Service

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On-demand computing

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Upload code to a cloud provider

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Code gets executed in response to an event

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No mention of servers

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Outside your sphere of concerns

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2How Does It Work?

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WordPress on a server

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Serverless WordPress is serverless PHP

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How does PHP work on a web server?

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How does serverless PHP compare?

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Both run code in response to an event

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So what’s different?

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Not just PHP that runs without a server

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Everything is serverless

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Service based architecture

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PHP runtime?

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Unique element of serverless PHP

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What does it do?

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Processes lambda event

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Figures out what the event wants

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Sends a result back (HTTP response)

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Mimics a web server

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Request a file, returns a file

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Creates FastCGI request, sends it to PHP-FPM

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Also manages the PHP-FPM process

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Only one PHP-FPM worker

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Lambda only handles one event at a time

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Serverless WordPress architecture

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3Advantages of serverless

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No servers to manage

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Not everyone is comfortable with servers

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Still responsible

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WordPress hosting solves this issue

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New problem. Scaling.

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WordPress hosting is single server

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Each Lambda function is a PHP worker

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Scaling in seconds not minutes

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Need to plan for the worst with servers

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How much would that cost?

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None of that with serverless

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Usage based pricing

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Pay when your workers run

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Charged by the millisecond

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4Drawbacks of Serverless

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Less predictable cost

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Paying for a server feels safe

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$X/month

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Need more performance? Pay more!

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How many requests? Average duration?

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Stressful and harder to budget for

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Costs less

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AWS lock-in

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Why not Azure or GCP?

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Not interchangeable

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Not just Lambda

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Need other services

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Equivalent ≠ Same

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Energy with AWS

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WordPress assumes you’re on a server

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Can’t install themes and plugins directly

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Media library

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WordPress plugins assume it too

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Potential compatibility issues

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5Evaluating Serverless

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Tempting to only compare cost

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“Serverless is expensive. I could just get a $5/month droplet from DigitalOcean.” - Someone comfortable with servers

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Dishonest

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Intangible costs

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Mental health

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Your time

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6Tools and Projects

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Serverless WordPress is open source

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github.com/ymirapp

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Need to fund development

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100 7 Ymir https://ymirapp.com/open

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GitHub sponsor (github.com/carlalexander)

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7Future of Hosting

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Would you buy a physical server?

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You get one in the cloud!

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Next step

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Serverless is deploy and forget

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Levels playing field

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What would you build?

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?Questions

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110 Thank you! 2 @twigpress carlalexander.ca blog.ymirapp.com