Data Expertise Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) discovered {that a} single hour of downtime ends in losses of over $300,000 for 91 % of enterprises.
Briefly, in case you’re a enterprise proprietor counting on a web site to maintain your store open to the world, you may’t afford for it to go down and want methods to maintain it out there always.
However that’s simpler mentioned than executed. Crashes, server failures, and information corruption are just some of the numerous banes of internet sites.
Nonetheless, you may implement fail-safe mechanisms, equivalent to various international servers, to profit from excessive availability and bypass many of those points. And on this information, we’ll see easy methods to just do that.
Learn on to be taught what excessive availability is, the way it can profit you, and easy methods to incorporate it right into a WordPress web site.
What’s excessive availability?
Excessive availability refers back to the capacity of a system to function usually and stay usable for lengthy durations with none downtime. Sometimes, it means the system is ready to remain operational regardless of failures, accidents, or different unexpected circumstances.
Within the context of WordPress web sites, excessive availability means the location stays open to guests regardless of site visitors spikes, server crashes, and pure disasters.
Excessive availability of WordPress web sites: Advantages
Whereas a web site freed from downtime is an efficient sufficient profit in itself, excessive availability additionally presents different perks.
- Improved model fame: An internet site that’s down doesn’t simply lose guests and potential patrons. It additionally exhibits your model in a nasty mild. In distinction, in case you keep operational and error-free regardless of site visitors spikes and pure disasters, you come throughout as a reliable {and professional} model.
- Higher search engine efficiency: Since Google’s web page expertise replace, the search big considers how guests expertise your webpages whereas deciding the search rating for these pages. In case your web site stays operational and reader-friendly regardless of site visitors spikes, you might be able to rank greater for related search queries.
- Enhanced consumer expertise: Whereas serving a pretty error web page throughout downtime would possibly allow you to keep in prospects’ good graces, protecting your WordPress web site as much as assist them with their issues goes a good distance.
The right way to arrange a high-availability WordPress web site
Excessive availability depends on two issues: fault tolerance and redundancy. Put merely, the elements of the system ought to resist frequent faults with out crashing — and if a crash does occur, options needs to be in place to take over.
Let’s stroll via easy methods to configure a high-availability WordPress web site.
1. Get a dependable internet hosting supplier
Your website hosting supplier hosts your web site content material on its servers and serves it to the guests after they enter your area title of their browser. Meaning if the internet hosting server goes down, your web site does too.
So, step one to organising a dependable WordPress web site is to get high-availability WordPress internet hosting.
Typical decisions? Shared internet hosting, VPS internet hosting, devoted internet hosting, and cloud internet hosting.
Nonetheless, in relation to high-availability WordPress, we suggest cloud internet hosting. Giants like Netflix and Reddit depend on it.
There are two primary methods to profit from cloud internet hosting. You possibly can strive unmanaged cloud internet hosting with public clouds like Amazon Net Providers (AWS) or companion with a managed cloud internet hosting supplier.
Each managed and unmanaged cloud internet hosting allow you to create a number of duplicate situations of your WordPress web site distributed worldwide. So, even when a knowledge server suffers a difficulty, your web site stays on-line by way of one other occasion.
In case you have the technical experience, you may strive internet hosting your WordPress web site with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).
Nonetheless, a 2022 IBM report discovered that virtually 70 % of organizations lack the required abilities to handle the cloud.
If that’s the case in your online business, it’s possible you’ll profit from a managed WordPress internet hosting resolution. In contrast to Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, Nexcess doesn’t depart you excessive and dry together with your points. As an alternative, we provide a serving to hand each time your IT staff requires it.
2. Configure load balancer
The a number of web site situations you create with cloud internet hosting supply extra than simply redundancy. You may also lean on situations to share the web site load and keep away from overwhelming one occasion by creating load balancers.
With Amazon EC2, you may configure a load balancer by following these steps:
- Sign up to your Amazon Net Providers (AWS) account.
- Create further EC2 situations (in case you solely have one).
- Create a load balancer and specify the EC2 situations to distribute the site visitors to.
- Change the EC2 situations’ safety settings to permit site visitors from the load balancer.
- Replace DNS settings on the area registrar to ahead the site visitors to the load balancer as a substitute of a single EC2 occasion.
Alternatively, in case you enroll with a managed host, the internet hosting supplier configures the load balancer.
3. Monitor your web site
Whereas cloud internet hosting with load balancers would get you out of a rut typically, you continue to must control your web site’s useful resource utilization to optimize the setup.
Disclaimer: In any other case, the pay-as-you-go pricing mannequin can flip into “pay-everything-you-have.”
You’ve gotten a bunch of how to do this.
Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon Net Providers helps you to monitor useful resource utilization by way of Amazon CloudWatch. Head to the CloudWatch console, seek for a metric, choose it, and think about the respective graph.
Google Analytics
You should control the site visitors quantity apart from Amazon CloudWatch to raised perceive your web site’s infrastructure. For instance, in case your EC2 situations are at capability with on a regular basis site visitors, it’s possible you’ll must search for options for site visitors spikes, equivalent to through the vacation season.
The easiest way to remain within the loop with site visitors numbers is through the use of Google Analytics. For those who haven’t already set it up, join your WordPress web site with Google Analytics to get real-time site visitors reviews.
Software efficiency monitoring
Whereas sudden spikes in site visitors can overburden your internet server, WordPress themes and plugins may share a few of the duty.
As an illustration, in case you use Elementor web page builder, you may need greater useful resource utilization than common.
You possibly can strive working your web site via utility efficiency displays (APMs) to control resource-hungry plugins.
With Nexcess, you get integration for New Relic, which helps you to monitor database queries, CPU utilization, reminiscence consumption, and response instances.
4. Implement auto scaling
Auto scaling helps you to deal with completely different site visitors numbers and bandwidth necessities cost-effectively by robotically adjusting sources. Briefly, you improve sources throughout site visitors spikes and decrease them throughout quiet instances.
With Amazon EC2, you may allow auto-scaling by taking the next steps:
- Navigate to the Amazon EC2 dashboard.
- Create a brand new launch configuration and choose the Amazon Machine Picture (AMI) you made whereas creating further situations above through the load balancer configuration.
- Create a brand new auto scaling group utilizing the brand new launch configuration and specify minimal, desired, and most EC2 situations.
- Configure scaling insurance policies to scale up and down primarily based on CPU utilization, bandwidth utilization, and different customized metrics.
- Evaluate the settings and finalize the creation of the auto scaling group.
Deal with scaling insurance policies rigorously for the reason that pay-as-you-go pricing mannequin can mess up your IT finances ought to a setting end in an outsized cloud with out motive.
Alternatively, with Nexcess, you may take pleasure in reasonably priced scalable internet hosting. We provide 24 hours of auto scaling at no cost each month, so that you received’t have to fret about paying for one-off site visitors spikes.
5. Implement caching methods
Whereas utilizing separate situations by way of cloud internet hosting presents a failover mechanism to your web site and prevents a single level of failure, it is dearer than different internet hosting plans.
To arrange a high-availability WordPress web site with out overburdening your pockets, it’s best to implement caching mechanisms that cut back the load on the internet servers.
As an illustration, you may configure a content material supply community (CDN) to share a few of the load. A CDN caches your WordPress web sites’ static content material and serves it from edge servers shut to finish customers.
Briefly, your origin server doesn’t have to answer most queries, and customers get the content material in much less time. It’s a win-win scenario.
For those who’re internet hosting your web site on Amazon EC2, you will get a CDN by way of Amazon CloudFront. It comes with free SSL certificates and pay-as-you-go pricing.
Even with the additional prices of a CDN, typically, you’ll save extra by choosing it than what you spent on it. To not point out, your guests may even have a greater consumer expertise as a result of decrease latency, and CDNs additionally supply safety towards assaults like distributed denial-of-service (DDoS).
That mentioned, managed cloud internet hosting suppliers would possibly supply a free CDN of their bundle internet hosting bundle, so there received’t be an additional value to start with. As an illustration, Nexcess Edge CDN helps you to serve your web site guests from servers internationally.
Last ideas: Information to high-availability WordPress web site with cloud internet hosting
Whether or not you handle a enterprise WordPress web site or personal a WooCommerce-based ecommerce retailer, cloud internet hosting can get rid of pesky downtime points.
For those who go for AWS, you should use Amazon EC2 and make it your personal by configuring it as desired.
Nonetheless, in case you haven’t managed an internet server by your self earlier than, the technical particulars and overwhelming Amazon documentation can derail you out of your actual work — the enterprise facet of issues — actual fast.
Alternatively, you may profit from a hands-off method by partnering with a managed cloud supplier like Nexcess to host your WordPress web site. Our high-performance worldwide information facilities make sure that you get what you want precisely as you want.
And in relation to uptime, you may take a look at our uptime historical past your self.
Take a look at our managed WordPress plans to get began at the moment.
