Hosting your WordPress website on Azure

March 4, 2019

Introduction

As your business grows and more users come to your site, it’s important that your website is hosted on the right provider. While hosting options were limited in the past, cloud servers have enabled websites, web applications, databases and other internet services to easily cope with the needs of rapidly, growing businesses.

Microsoft launched the Azure cloud computing service in 2010 to help developers build and deploy web applications, storage and backups in the cloud, with data centers located all around the world.

Why Azure?

Microsoft prides itself on Azure for 5 simple reasons:

1. Flexible – As the needs of your website changes, you can scale resources to match your business needs. That means if you need to scale up resources for increased demand, you can do that and then bring it back down.
2. Open – Azure offers support for any Operating System, framework, language and tool. If you need to incorporate another service with your WordPress site, you can add that. Whether it is a .NET or Python project, you can integrate it with ease.
3. Reliable – Microsoft has promised a  99.95% availability Service Level Agreement (SLA). This means that the chances of your site going down is 0.05%. Azure offers customer support 24/7 to help with any issues that might arise with your website, in the case of your website ever going down..*
4. Global – Microsoft has data-centers all over the world, from North America to Asia. Depending on your locale, Azure lets you host your products in the region that you are serving. This means that if you need your website hosted in Toronto or Dubai, there is no problem in doing so.
5. Economical – With Azure, you only pay for the resources you use. As you scale resources up and down, you only pay for what you use. This means that if you are running a sale on your site and expect more traffic, you can scale up resources to ensure your customers receive the best possible experience, and then scale down once the sale is done. This can save you money while providing the best user experience possible.

Why host your WordPress website on Azure?

Here are some reasons why you might want to host your WordPress website on Azure:

Easy to Deploy

Deploying a web application on Azure can be accomplished within minutes thanks to pre-existing solutions found on the Azure marketplace. It’s as simple as searching for WordPress in the marketplace, clicking a button, and then completing the famous WordPress 5 minute installation.If you are moving a pre-existing WordPress site to Azure, you can create a web application with any prerequisites required to run your site. If you need help moving your site over or creating a new one on Azure, we can help!

Automated backups

Backups are an important part of website maintenance. If an update ever goes wrong, having a backup handy can prevent downtime of your website. Azure makes backups really simple, letting you control the scheduling of when backups occur, and the retention plan for how long to keep backups present. Since it is managed right in Azure, no need to use any external service!

Metrics & Analytics

Azure offers many tools to monitor the performance of your website. Explore different metrics of your site, including how many users are visiting particular pages, when they are visiting your site, and how many resources are being used. You can enable email notifications and alerts to receive updates on the health, operation and performance of your website.