Pantheon: Excellent hosting and scaling solutions for WordPress and Drupal websites

Key points:

• Pantheon, a leader in Website Management Platform (WMP), offers unique hosting and scaling solutions for WordPress and Drupal websites. It uses lightweight containers instead of bulky virtual machines, contains only the application itself and does not contain a full guest operating system or other dependencies. This approach enables fast configuration, high availability, efficient scalability, consistency, improved security, and better performance.
• Using Pantheon's WMP, developers can manage WordPress and Drupal applications through dashboards and execute site code on hundreds of powerful servers with the Runtime Matrix infrastructure. The platform includes smart routing, load balancing, advanced caching and security services, and a Pantheon content library for more efficient management of databases, files, and version control.
• Pantheon's WMP offers many advantages for businesses and organizations with high traffic websites. It can quickly scale to handle peak loads, ensure uptime even when service failures, and ensure consistency between development, staging and production systems. The platform is also designed to prevent all types of website attacks and provide websites with optimized response times regardless of the requirements.

(This article is sponsored by Pantheon. Thank you for your support of the sponsors who made SitePoint possible!)

Challenges of Traditional Deployment:

Deploying your WordPress or Drupal website to a new web host usually involves the following tasks:

1. Register and create a new environment.
2. If you are using a dedicated server or a virtual server, install and/or configure the web server, PHP, MySQL, and other dependencies.
3. Create a new database and set the user ID and password.
4. Upload application code of several megabytes.
5. Edit the configuration parameters of the application.
6. Run the installer.
7. Upload, install and configure third-party themes and plug-ins.
8. Add your content.
9. Test. curse. Slam the keyboard. Fixed the issue. Repeat the test.
10. Repeat the entire process for your testing, staging and production environments.

Then, your real problem begins...

• Updates may be difficult to deploy to all places
• Summits of traffic caused by popular articles or advertising campaigns can stop the server at its worst
• Denforcement attacks can have catastrophic consequences for every site hosted in the same environment
• As you develop, the website is difficult to expand
• Hardware and software updates may cause interruptions or compatibility issues.

This process may be controllable for a small number of installations, but consider hosting dozens of websites – even thousands. Managing multiple WordPress or Drupal websites is time-consuming, tedious, error-prone, and can prevent you from engaging in truly valuable tasks.

Can cloud hosting help?

To some extent, yes. However, cloud hosting often requires the use of one or more separate virtual machines for each site. Virtual machines are huge, expensive, and still rely on a large amount of hardware resources to scale effectively. Traditional extension methods also require a lot of intervention from system administrators or DevOps personnel. Modern infrastructure-as-a-service providers such as AWS and Rackspace can easily configure new virtual machines to handle additional loads, but someone, somewhere needs to connect these extra servers together. Deployment takes time – this may be too late for your traffic spike.

Step 1: Use version control

If you are not using version control, then start now. Git is a good choice, but any solution is better than nothing. Versioning can be used to create a stable deployment process to improve your workflow. Ideally:

• Team members can access their own standalone development environment, which allows them to update or create new features on separate branches of code.
• Content (such as your WordPress pages, posts, and images) is synchronized from a live environment to all development and staging systems. The team can then work based on a comprehensive understanding of the system and accurately snapshots of reality.
• Automated quality assurance testing ensures that new code is tested before deployment. The problematic feature cannot reach the real-time server.

Step 2: Consider using Website Management Platform (WMP)

What? A website management platform is a new concept. They are similar to cloud-based platform-as-a-service (PaaS) hosts such as Heroku or Cloud Foundry. However, WMP is built for specific applications such as WordPress and Drupal, not for development environments like PHP or Ruby.

The leader in this field is Pantheon, a company that implements hosting and expansion in new ways. Instead of relying on bulky virtual machines, it builds the site based on lightweight containers abstracted from the operating system and hardware. Contains only applications - does not contain complete guest operating systems, PHP, MySQL, or other dependencies. Then, you can manage WordPress and Drupal applications from Pantheon's dashboard.

Pantheon creates an infrastructure called Runtime Matrix. It executes the code of the site on hundreds of powerful servers that serve millions of containers. Smart routing, load balancing, and advanced caching and security services are standard. The service also includes a Pantheon content library, which allows more efficient management of databases, files, and version control.

Pantheon's website management platform has many advantages, including:

1. Quick configuration: Configure containers with software, which means that containers can be added or deleted very quickly. An idle site (such as a development container) is effectively deactivated before a new request is made. The world's largest websites (such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter) are managed through software, rather than manually adding and configuring new virtual machines, servers, and services. Software-based configuration eliminates human errors and greatly improves the speed at which new services will be launched. The website management platform can quickly configure all the necessary services so that the site can quickly scale to handle peak loads without manual intervention.

2. High Availability: High Availability means uptime guaranteed even when service fails. A compelling aspect of a website management platform is the ability to handle redirection of traffic and service requests for services known to work properly, such as code execution, content requests, databases, and other services. The multi-tenant high availability values ??introduced by Salesforce.com, Gmail, and Heroku are now entering the field of website management, where a professional team of platform engineers provides services that most companies cannot build and manage on their own.

3. Efficient scaling: Your site can quickly scale from hundreds of page views to millions of times a day without downtime or maintenance issues. Unlike virtual machines, no matter how much the website needs increase, it does not require reconfiguration or restart.

4. Consistency: Every WordPress or Drupal application container is the same. Your development, staging, and production systems are not out of sync because they all share the same distributed content library, configuration, and performance features as real-time sites.

5. Best security: Website attacks are becoming more and more frequent. Website management platforms are continuously monitored by security experts and are designed to prevent denial of service, network intrusions, payment card fraud, viruses and other attacks.

6. Best performance: Infrastructure with a single purpose can be highly optimized for this purpose. The website management platform is designed to deliver content over the Internet. Compared to traditional hosting, traditional hosting has a huge difference in workloads and development languages, and the website management platform can optimize every interaction from the browser to the runtime engine to speed up content delivery. All aspects of the platform have been optimized and tuned to provide the best response time for the website. Regardless of the demand, your site will remain responsive.

7. Less trouble: You can forget to host and deploy and focus on more fun everyday web development tasks. Pantheon claims to have the world's largest Drupal infrastructure, running over 1,000,000 containers for customers including Cisco, Dell, Arizona State University and New Republic. WordPress support has been added recently, and it may be more successful due to the lack of enterprise-level hosting options for WordPress websites.

Conclusion:

Of course, it is difficult to understand the advantages that a website management platform can provide before trying it. Fortunately, Pantheon offers a free account so you can evaluate the service and then upgrade as your website grows. For more information on the Pantheon website management platform and to get the free e-book Drupal Hosting Dead, visit pantheon.io.

FAQs (FAQs) about improving WordPress and Drupal performance with Pantheon

• What makes Pantheon ideal for hosting WordPress and Drupal sites?

Pantheon is a high-performance hosting platform designed specifically for WordPress and Drupal sites. It offers a range of features that can significantly improve the performance of these sites. These features include automatic backup, one-click core updates, and advanced caching. Additionally, Pantheon provides a dedicated environment for each site, ensuring that resources are not shared and performance is not affected.

• How does Pantheon's advanced caching work?

Pantheon's advanced caching system is designed to speed up the delivery of site content to users. It does this by storing a copy of the site's pages in a cache and then providing the user with those cached pages. This reduces the time it takes for the site to load, because the server does not have to generate each page from scratch every time the user visits.

• Can I use Pantheon for large WordPress and Drupal sites?

Yes, Pantheon is designed to handle large WordPress and Drupal sites. It provides a scalable infrastructure that can handle sudden surges in traffic without any performance issues. This makes it ideal for businesses and organizations with high traffic websites.

• How does Pantheon handle the security of WordPress and Drupal sites?

Pantheon takes security very seriously. It provides automatic security updates, isolate each site in its own container to prevent cross-site contamination, and provides advanced security features such as two-factor authentication and IP whitelisting.

• What kind of support does Pantheon provide?

Pantheon provides 24/7 support to its customers. This includes access to a team of WordPress and Drupal experts who can help you with any issues you may have.

• How does Pantheon's one-click core update work?

Pantheon's one-click core update feature allows you to update the core of your WordPress or Drupal site with just one click. This ensures that your site always runs the latest and most secure software version.

• Can I migrate my existing WordPress or Drupal site to Pantheon?

Yes, Pantheon provides a migration tool that can easily migrate your existing WordPress or Drupal sites to their platform. This tool handles all technical aspects of migration, ensuring a smooth transition.

• Does Pantheon provide any tools for developers?

Yes, Pantheon provides a range of tools for developers. These tools include a command line interface, version control integrated with Git, and the ability to create multiple development environments for testing and staging.

• How does Pantheon's dedicated environment improve performance?

By providing a dedicated environment for each site, Pantheon ensures that your site resources are not shared with any other sites. This means your site can run at its best without being affected by the performance of other sites on the same server.

• How much does it cost to host a WordPress or Drupal site on Pantheon?

The cost of hosting a site on Pantheon depends on the size and complexity of the site. Pantheon offers a range of plans to meet different needs and budgets, starting at $29 per month.

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