Fast SSD is Fast.

I recently blogged about moving my WordPress site out of MediaTemple.net due to the flaky Grid-Service offering I am currently subscribed to. Today I managed to complete Phase 1 of the migration.

This blog is currently hosted at DigitalOcean. I decided that it’ll be the perfect test of their network since this is currently not a high-traffic production blog and I am still deciding between going with them full on or moving my other sites to my old favorite – Linode.

There’s a couple of reasons why I chose DigitalOcean over Linode this time round :

  1. DigitalOcean currently offers the coveted SSD Servers for a dirt cheap price.

  2. Linode is still recovering from the whole security debacle that recently happened and I am still not sure how I feel about the whole thing yet. I love them to death and am still an ardent fan of their service and support but the whole trust and security issues still bother me.

With regards to my original requirement spec, I’ll admit I did cut some corners. Here’s what I have done and what’s still pending :

DONE

Version Control of Filesystem to prevent security issues

****I am now versioning the site entirely using Git. This will help me even when I need to shift hosting later and not have to rely on the terribly slow SFTP connections.

PENDING

  • Allow frontend user to still interact via media/plugin upload/update
  • FTP is needed for Theme uploads and stuff

With regards to the above two, I could technically implement it using shortcuts but I decided that I wanted to find a more elegant solution for longer term use. Right now, git deployments should work just fine.

  • Blazing fast caching

This one is a must. Right now the site is functioning on super-basic wordpress optimization settings. I have yet to tweak the Webservers to function at full capacity but the SSD drive is helping tremendously. Check out the Pingdom Report comparison below and the Blitz.IO test results :

MediaTemple – Previous Host :

DigitalOcean – Current Host :

_Blitz.IO Performance Report : _

  • Possibly modular enough for scaling later – DB vs Filesystem vs CDN

Now that I am maintaining the site on my own server, the modularity for scaling later becomes much easier but I’d optimally like to find efficient ways to scale it better.

  • Creating new empty WordPress Sites as and when needed (bonus)

This is also a futuristic addition if I so choose to do it. It is a bonus but I’d like it bundled in as a solution.