Ben May: Working with massive WordPress sites, clients and enterprise

Slow websites are bad and as websites grow in traffic, slow websites get slower. It’s often a wise move to invest a small amount of time in the early stages of a site’s life to think about performance and scaling. How you can work with larger sites when it comes to caching, file management (version control), SQL performance and front-end optimisation.

Transcript

1. Working with
   massive WordPress
   sites, clients and
   enterprise
   Ben May
   benmay.org
   @benjmay
   

   View Slide

2. Who am I
   &
   What do I do
   

   View Slide

3. I am not an expert
   (ProTip: don’t listen to what I say)
   

   View Slide

4. What am I good at?
   

   View Slide

5. 1%
   5%
   10%
   10%
   30%
   45%
   Backend Dev
   Sysadmin
   Design (Critic)
   Frontend Dev
   Project Manager
   Designer (Pixel Pusher)
   If I was a pie chart
   

   View Slide

6. View Slide

7. What is
   “enterprise”
   (to me)?
   

   View Slide

8. 2 types of
   enterprise
   1. Corporate enterprise
   2. Enterprise performance
   

   View Slide

9. The road to
   happiness
   1. Servers and networks
   2. Server side & code caching
   3. Plugins or DIY?
   4. Themes
   5. ?
   6. Profit
   

   View Slide

10. Firstly, how I do it
    1. Batcache (advanced-cache.php)
    2. APC or Memcached (object-cache.php)
    3. Git on Beanstalk w/ auto deployments
    4. Mark Jaquith’s skeleton
    5. Basecamp (todo manager)
    6. EdgeCast CDN (Origin Pull)
    

    View Slide

11. View Slide

12. Servers
    and
    networks
    

    View Slide

13. Understand how a
    server works
    

    View Slide

14. You don’t need to
    be an expert at
    everything
    

    View Slide

15. ProTip:
    Get NewRelic
    

    View Slide

16. When things
    go well
    

    View Slide

17. When
    things
    don’t go
    well
    

    View Slide

18. When
    things
    go
    slow
    

    View Slide

19. ProTip: Use CDNs
    Origin Pull FTW.
    

    View Slide

20. View Slide

21. “Managed
    WordPress
    Hosting”
    

    View Slide

22. View Slide

23. Server-side &
    code caching
    

    View Slide

24. WP-Cron sucks
    

    View Slide

25. NewRelic background
    tasks - use ‘em
    

    View Slide

26. View Slide

27. Default transient
    usage sucks
    // Get any existing copy of our transient data
    if ( false === ( $blah = get_transient( 'blah' ) ) )
    {
    // It wasn't there, so regenerate the data and
    // save the transient
    $blah = new WP_Query( 'cat=5' );
    set_transient( 'blah', $blah );
    }
    // Use $blah like you would have normally...
    codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_transient
    

    View Slide

28. View Slide

29. Plugins
    or
    DIY?
    

    View Slide

30. Simple, single use
    plugins
    

    View Slide

31. Dependancies
    SUCK
    

    View Slide

32. View Slide

33. Themes
    

    View Slide

34. View Slide

35. View Slide

36. Caching
    problems
    

    View Slide

37. Melbourne Cup
    2012
    

    View Slide

38. By 9am - 40,000 page impressions
    Peaked at 20,000 requests per second
    1m+ page views for the day
    250,000+ uniques for the day
    Twice the amount of traffic than Fox Sports*
    * According to the measurement company Effective Measure
    

    View Slide

39. As a media publisher, you
    live for the moment when
    you get MASSIVE traffic like
    this...... You love this
    moment, but also in the
    back of your mind is the
    fear your site will not be
    able to handle the demand.
    “
    ~ Zac Zavos
    The Roar
    conversant-media.com
    

    View Slide

40. Thank you
    benmay.org
    @benjmay
    

    View Slide